Word Wenches

Forbidden pleasures

Here's Jo, waving the flag of freedom, supported by a stern eye from Davy.

Freedom to read, that is. This is Freedom To Read Week, and that's a very serious subject. (Does this only exist in Canada? If so, I'm shocked!)

I'm actually quite annoyed by the way people use books like Harry Potter as examples to catch media attention. Yes, it's ridiculous that some people have tried to have the books taken out of school libraries because they promote witchcraft and such, but such an example undervalues the real issue -- attempts, often successful, to suppress ideas that challenge the norm or the powers that be.

You can read a list of the most commonly challenged and banned books in the US here.

I'm not going to go on at length about that, but I'd be interested in your opinion of the above. Also, are there are ridiculous or serious book restrictions going on in your area that might not be widely known? Do you think some books should be banned, or severely restricted?

You can look at the Canadian Freedom To Read website here.

Here's a quote from there. "Freedom to read can never be taken for granted. Even in Canada, a free country by world standards, books and magazines are banned at the border. Books are removed from the shelves in Canadian libraries, schools and bookstores every day. Free speech on the Internet is under attack. Few of these stories make headlines, but they affect the right of Canadians to decide for themselves what they choose to read."

I don't want to underplay at all the seriousness of true book banning, and especially the powerful challenges faced by people in more difficult countries, but the last bit made me think.

"...the right of Canadians to decide for themselves what they choose to read."

We don't only restrict that right by taking books off shelves or stopping them at the border. We can do so in other ways, and it happens to romance novels all the time. Expressed disapproval or ridicule is an attempt to stop people from reading what they choose to read. This disapproval is even sometimes dished out by bookstore clerks as they scan the books at the cash register! Some bookstores have section for mystery, science fiction and fantasy, but refuse to stock "those kinds of books." That's a very overt attempt to limit choice. Many literary events never invite romance authors. Some don't invite any genre authors. I was reliably told of one small literary event that decided to invite some romance writers. Some of the other authors threatened to pull out if that was done.

All the above people probably take Freedom To Read week seriously, as they should. Isn't it time for them to embrace the idea completely, and make it Freedom To Read, Even The Books I Don't Approve Of, week?

Unfortunately, all this disapproval makes some romance readers secretive about their choice, or at least apologetic. I was working in the romance section at a big charity book sale last weekend and some customers there made deprecating remarks, or apologized for their choice. "I know it's trash, but..." "I shouldn't be reading this, but..."

So, as a romance reader, do you ever experience disapproval or worse? How do you handle it? Are you hesitant to read a romance novel in some places? What do you say if someone insults your choice of reading?

 And, to turn it on its head, is there a type of fiction you scorn others for reading?

I'll confess, when I came across this book at the book fair last year I laughed. I sneered. I poked fun at it. Okay, I still can't take it seriously! Especially when I found a typo in a casual flip through the 150 pages of large print. At the end of a brief sex scene where they achieved "the soft of fulfillment" whatever that is, I read "When I opened my ewes..." Baaaa!

So we all do it, don't we? But, I hope if I saw someone reading this book (published in 1965, so unlikely) I would hide my opinion and say nothing. If someone asked my opinion of the book, however, I'd give it.

I think that's an important distinction. I'm entitled to comment on and criticize individual books, and if I'm rude enough, to do so to people reading them. I'm not entitled to abuse people for reading a type of book. I also think it's wrong for a genre to be barred from a bookstore or the authors of a genre to be seen as lesser than other authors.

What say you?

It's just over a month to the publication of The Secret Wedding, and I've put up the beginning on my web site. If you like a sneak peek, check it out here.

Jo

Lady Macbeth's New Cloak

Just a quick blog today to announce that LADY MACBETH will be out in a trade edition soon, with a new cover! The trade paperback will be released from Three Rivers Press in April -- new format, great new price and a great new design. It's always exciting to finally see the cover design for a book -- and here it is ... 

The background is a pattern of Celtic knots in a bronze tone on black, and the cover will have a matte and gloss effect. The bronze brooch is a 7th century Irish example in the British Museum -- a particularly interesting and dangerous brooch that reflects, in the intricate artistry of its details and the subtle threat of that long point, the hardships and stark beauty of the Celtic age in Scotland. I think it's a striking cover, and I'm very excited to be able to share it with you all first -- it's not even up on my website yet, but will be soon!

Also featured in the trade edition of LADY M -- two teaser chapters from my next hardcover from Crown, QUEEN HEREAFTER: A Novel of Margaret of Scotland.

"If you think you know Lady M, think again." -- Entertainment Weekly

If you were thinking of reading Lady M, but haven't had the chance -- or didn't want to spring for the hardcover price (honestly, I've been there myself!) -- the trade edition is now available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other sites for pre-ordering. (There's a handy link in our right-hand column if you'd like to check it out further!) 

What do you all think -- would this cover catch your eye on the bookstore tables? It's a bit different, and while that's a quality that publishers always hope for to some extent, different can be cool, yet sometimes it's a tricky line to tread.

What cover looks do you like in non-romance historical fiction lately? Would you snap this book up for a closer look, even if you didn't know the author through Word Wenches? Either way, I hope you'll put LADY M in trade on your list of books to look for!

Susan Sarah    

And the Winner is ...

... Valerie LaMont, who has won a copy of The King's Favorite, by Susan Holloway Scott.  Valerie has already claimed her prize.  Congratulations, Valerie!

Starting a book

Anne here, writing about the process of starting a new book. I'm thinking about this, not simply because I'm starting a book at the moment, but also because a few romance-writing friends of mine are in town and we were talking last night about our different writing processes. And since a few of you have asked about how we approach a book, I thought I'd write about my process today.

When I start a book, there's an initial time when I'm doing very little writing, but a lot of dreaming and spinning story ideas, scribbling bits down by hand in a book or on the back of an envelope and researching possibilities. It's a process of gradual coalescence as odd ideas and aspects of character come together and I start to see the possible shape of a story.

My hero and heroine usually do one of two things -- they either emerge slowly, making themselves known to me over a period of a few chapters. I write and rewrite and change their names and personalities and backgrounds until they come to life and start interacting with other characters and the chemistry is right. This happened with Tallie's Knight -- my original heroine was a young woman called Serena and she was cool, collected, unflappable and ever so slightly annoying. As was my hero, so of course, it didn't work. So I replaced her with a much younger and more naive girl, a vulnerable, warm-hearted day-dreamer with decided opinions, and the moment I put her on the page with the hero, they created sparks and the story was off and running.

Alternatively, characters arrive fully formed on the page and proceed to take over, taking the book in a direction I hadn't planned. Gideon, from Perfect Rake is the perfect example. I'd actually planned to write a hero who was dark and dangerous, and Gideon just strolled onto the page, being funny and flippant and taking right over. I wrestled with him for ages, before giving in and letting him be who he was. And if it sounds like I can't control my characters -- I am aware of how silly that sounds -- but it's true. 

For the last few books I've made story collages. A number of authors I admire use this process so I became curious about it and when I experimented with it, I found I really enjoyed the process. More, I found it revealed to me relationships and story possibilities that I might not otherwise have noticed. And the best thing about having a collage is that it plunges me right into the world of the book -- invaluable after an interrupted working day.

I'd always used location pictures and the odd evocative image, but I'd never had photos of my hero or heroine -- in fact I always resisted questions that asked what movie star I'd have play my characters. I have a clear picture of them in my mind, but there's never a 'right' face of picture. The faces I use in my collages are not so much my characters, but representative of some aspect of them. For instance in this collage for Perfect Kiss, it's the expression on the hero's face that's important, not his features. My hero had darker hair and strange yellow wolf's eyes, but he had that mix of control, confidence and deeply hidden vulnerability that I see in that photo. There's an element of the gothic in that book, and the setting plays a large part -- and you can see that from the collage.

It's quite a different feel to The Stolen Princess Collage or His Captive Lady collage, both posted below. Can you tell which is which?

I also like to have a theme song, or songs. For the Devil Riders series, every one of my theme songs has been a song sung by Katie Melua -- she's a young singer, born in Georgia (former USSR) and raised in Ireland and England, and there's something about her beautiful haunting voice and lyrics that have clicked in my mind with the books.

It wasn't quite my theme song for His Captive Lady, but a song that linked with the mood of parts of the story was Katie Melua's Piece by Piece. Beautiful, heartbreaking song. I won't explain, don't want to spoil the story, but if you've read the book, you'll know which parts the song suits.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPgWFj-ZqIE

The theme song of the next story, To Catch A Bride, (Sept 09) is another Katie Melua song - The Closest Thing to Crazy. Listen to it here and feel the gorgeous goosebumps.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DCacIEbAlM

How can I think I'm standing strong,
Yet feel the air beneath my feet?
How can happiness feel so wrong?
How can misery feel so sweet?
How can you let me watch you sleep,
Then break my dreams the way you do?
How can I have got in so deep?
Why did I fall in love with you?
CHORUS:
This is the closest thing to crazy I have ever been
Feeling twenty-two, acting seventeen,
This is the nearest thing to crazy I have ever known,
I was never crazy on my own…
And now I know that there's a link between the two,
Being close to craziness and being close to you.

But finally, all the playing with images and songs and dreams and ideas brings me to the moment when I just have to sit down in the chair and, as Barbara Samuel once said, 'begin to ruin it" — when I try to put the story that's dancing in my head into words on paper. So I write the first page. It's a page that I'll rewrite a number of times--the opening scene is so important -- but sometimes, just sometimes, you can hit the right note first up and it will start the story unfolding in the best, most dramatic way. That's when it's magic. 

What about you? As a reader, do you find it interesting to hear about the writing process, or would you rather not know how it happens? And if you're a writer, how do you approach your stories? And if you have any questions, feel free to ask .

What I'm doing now.

What am I doing now? Research, research, research! And there's a reason for Charlie and Davey among roses!

It wasn't supposed to be research, research, reseach, though it's lots of fun. My grail story would be written fairly fast, I thought, because I'd done the history research. I know about the events at the end of the Stephen and Matilda wars. I'm riffing slightly off the Parsifal story, and I'd read variants of that. I knew the clothing, armor, food....

But it's never like that, is it? (Why raspberries? They have a place in the story, and this is a medieval picture, though I'm not sure of the date. Apologies if the pics are strange sizes. I still haven't figured out Typepad's new system. I selected "small" for the raspberries, but they're looking big to me now!)

First, my heroine insisted that she wasn't a gardener or herbalist, or any of the other easy placeholder skills I had in mind (she's soon going off on an adventure, and I didn't particularly expect her skills to be important.) No, she's a brewer, or alewife, I suppose. Except that she's a nun. But that's another matter.

Do you think an ale-maker more interesting than a gardener or healer? What about other trades, assuming the heroine has one at all. This is a working nunnery, so she could be a carpenter or even a butcher!

Fortunately I do have some books to hand that tell me about medieval ale making. You do know, BTW, that the difference between ale and beer is that beer has hops in it? Ale was also the main drink and continued so into the 18th century. Daily ale was a weak drink, quickly made and refreshing. An important factor, however, was that ale-making required boiling water, and this made it safe to drink when water wasn't always. It was only supplanted by tea, which also requires boiling water, and certainly my aged grandmother was insistent that the kettle be at a really good boil and stay there for a few minutes before the water was poured on the tea. A remnant of folk wisdom that said this made it safe?

 Then roses became important to my story. (Another medieval picture.) Flowers were already important, but as we hashed around a title with our editor, we ended up with A Chalice of Roses, which is a lovely title, but I decided I might as well make roses significant. (The we, of course, is the Faery Four -- me, Mary Jo Putney, Barbara Samuel, and Karen Harbaugh.)

No problem. I know the basics, and Margaret explained most of it beautifully. Roses were much more limited in the middle ages. They bloomed once, round about June, and my story takes place later, but that's fine, because the blooming is supposed to be magical or miraculous. We had an old fashioned rose in our garden here that bloomed just once a year so here's a picture. Medieval cultivated roses were probably similar.

(There's an interesting distinction between magical and miraculous, isn't there, which manages to push magic into trickery, and keep miracles for the divine. I wonder if that's warranted. It seems to deny earth magic, and I'm not sure that's fair. Any opinion?)

So all was fine until my heroine found a fresh rose petal, and not just any petal, but a blood red one! I rushed off to the books and found that there was indeed a rose that might be blooming in July. It was a crusader import that was called the Autumn Damask Rose because though it put out its main blooms in June, a few more would come right up into September. It was darker, too. But not, alas, blood red.

Ah well, when I'm writing a Grail story, I have to expect some miracles, or even some magic. Onward!

But then, just as I think I'm set, it appears that Rosewell Nunnery*  is not a day's journey from Glastonbury in Somerset, but only two miles away, and that my heroine, Sister Gledys is fascinated by Glastonbury Tor, the great hill that sticks up there. (The tower wasn't there in the middle ages. The photographer apologizes that this picture is taken with a cell phone, but I like the mystery of it. Source, Creative Commons and here.)

(*Did you know that convent is a recent word? My sister the nun enlightened me there. Came as a shock, as I've made that mistake a few times.)

 It also occurs to me that this story is developing some similarities to my story in Dragon Lovers, but I can't seem to prevent it. At least Gledys is not going to be eaten by dragons, I can promise you that!

All else, she mutters, is in the hands of the magic and miracles that we call writing.

Just in case you don't know, the legend of Glastonbury is that it was founded by Joseph of Arimathea, he who gave up his grave for Jesus's body. Legend says that he used the cup of the Last Supper to catch Christ's blood at the cross, and that he later took the cup to England, to Somerset, and buried it at the base of Glastonbury Tor. More that than, some versions say the Tor is a portal to another dimension, or another world. Isn't this all fun? I love it.

And of course the other extension of the legend is that Joseph was a sea trader, and also a relation of Jesus of Nazareth's, and that he took him to England at least once, maybe many times. That Jesus, being a carpenter, helped Joseph build a church at Glastonbury. The Old Church did once exist where Glastonbury Abbey later stood, but no one knows when it was built.

This is the genesis of the famous poem by William Blake, that became a hymn still sung today.

And did those feet in ancient time
        Walk upon England's mountains green?
    And was the holy Lamb of God
        On England's pleasant pastures seen?
    And did the Countenance Divine
        Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
    And was Jerusalem builded here
        Among those dark Satanic mills?

    Bring me my bow of burning gold:
        Bring me my arrows of desire:
    Bring me my spear: O clouds, unfold!
        Bring me my chariot of fire!
    I will not cease from mental fight,
        Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
    Till we have built Jerusalem
        In England's green and pleasant land.

There's a performance on You Tube with some nice pictures.

So I'm having lots of fun, but my story's only half told, and keeps shapeshifting in my hands in a very magical way, and I want it finished before I go to England in a few weeks. At which point, I intend to visit Glastonbury, which won't be far away. Perhaps I'll blog about that then. And, of course, The Secret Wedding is coming closer and closer!

Jo :)

Lament for Letters Lost

by Susan Holloway Scott

I can’t deny that computers have improved the writing life.  My trusty MacBook is the most loyal of companions, instantly converting my thoughts into legible words, helping with research, fixing my horrendous spelling.  I can’t imagine writing a book without a computer, and there’s no doubt that without one my backlist would probably be two or three titles instead of over forty.

Yet I still mourn the loss of the handwritten word.  Once upon a time, and not so very long ago, a person was judged by her or his handwriting.  Penmanship (the very word sounds so hopelessly dated) was given the same  care as arithmetic and spelling in elementary school, with endless loops drawn over special blue-lined pages.  The grown-up pride of being able to write in cursive!  The magic of carefully developing a signature, practicing over and over to get just the right swash and dash for perfect self-expression!  The secret thrill of writing “Mrs. Paul McCartney” just to see, you know, how it would look!

A handwritten word reveals much more than simple syllables: anger or haste, affection or care.  My family has always been letter-writers, and even without reading a word, I always recognize the writer at once: my father’s spare and upright handwriting, half-printed, half-cursive, and always in a felt-tip pen; my mother’s careful slant in blue ball-point; one grandmother’s spidery loops and the other’s squat little letters in a line.  My grandmothers are both long gone, but I still can feel an instant link to them when I come across a book they inscribed to me for a birthday or a recipe card tucked into a cookbook.  For the same reason, I have all my husband’s love-letters and notes to me from college, tucked in a pillow-case for safekeeping. 

One of the best parts for me about writing historical fiction is that my characters are based on people who actually lived.  Reading their transcribed letters is an important research tool, but finding those same letters in their  original, handwritten form is almost shockingly immediate.  The hurried note of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, written to his wife Sarah (the heroine of my book Duchess) soon after he had beaten the French at Ramillies in 1706, is endlessly evocative in its run-on sentences and abbreviated endearments that he knows Sarah will understand. His closing (shown above) is certainly worthy of any romance hero: "Pray believe me when I assure you that I love you more than I can express. J." If you're game to try to make out the faded writing for yourself, the original letter can be found on the Library of Congress site here.

Louise de Keroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth, is the heroine of my July '09 historical novel, The French Mistress (That's the glorious cover up there, making its WordWenches debut.)  Louise never lost the loopy, girlish handwriting she’d been taught in a French convent school; her 1692 signature –– "L. duchesse de Portsmouth" –– looks more appropriate to a teenager than a woman in her forties.  Somehow reading her wandering penmanship make her efforts to write in her adopted English –– each word painfully phonetically spelled out –– seem doubly touching. 

I'm fascinated by the difference between how Louise's royal lover, King Charles II, signed a treaty or declaration with careful formality, as opposed to the dashing exuberance of his many love-letters to Louise, the words clearly flying from his pen: "I should do myself wrong if I told you that I love you better than all the world besides, for that were making a comparison where 'tis impossible to express the true passion and kindness I have for my dearest, dearest Fubs! – CR"  (‘Fubs’ was his pet name for her, short for fubsy, or chubby –– which she was, and which he adored –– and the CR was for Charles or Carolus Rex, because even in love-letters full of exclamation points, he was still the king.)

Would that letter have the same magic if it had been sent via a Blackberry or cell phone, the emotions reduced to texting shorthand? OMG! How can an email ever convey the same fervor or passion as a handwritten letter?  I suppose one can imagine the distant Beloved’s fingers tapping away on the keypad, but somehow it isn’t the same.  And how do you save a text message under your pillow? 

Personally I find computerized correspondence woefully lacking.  Yes, it’s a lot easier to read than my handwriting, but my handwritten notes are full of little cartoons and drawings, ups and downs and swashing underlines, flying hearts and lightning bolts and laughing bears.  Emoticons just don’t cut it. 

I know this is dinosaur-thinking.  We have passwords and numbers to identify us now, not signatures. Though my children can still be beaten into producing thank-you notes for their grandparents, they don’t write much of anything by hand.  College mailboxes are so neglected nowadays that when a package arrives, the mailroom has to send a text message to the student to make sure they pick it up.  Penmanship has been dropped from school curricula, to be replaced by the far more useful keyboarding.  Even bill-paying is done on-line, and checkbooks are the payment of last resort.  There’s  such a decline in written correspondence that the Post Office is considering cutting back delivery days.  

Sign your name, make your mark.  The pen may be mightier than the sword, but the keyboard trumps them both.  And maybe, for the sake of romance, individualism, and old-fashioned self-expression, that’s not such a good thing.

What about you?  Do you still write the occasional letter by hand, or keep a handwritten journal or diary? (Heck, do you still even write a grocery list by hand?) Do you miss the hand-written word, or do you find the trade of clarity for expression a fair one? Do you have a secret stash of letters sentimentally tucked away somewhere, or is an "Incoming Mail" folder just fine with you?  I'll give away one of my books (your choice from any on my website) to a name drawn from those who post a comment between now and Tuesday night.

Margaret Evans Porter: our first Triple Honorary Word Wench!

A Virtual Gift for
Triple Honorary Word Wench
Margaret Evans Porter

Margaret, many thanks for visiting the Word Wenches for the third time.  Your gardening and roses post was wonderfully timely, so I’m sending you this virtual bouquet of Roses Princess Margaret.  May your gardens bloom early and long this year!

Mary Jo, adding that this lovely rose picture was taken by zenryaku and is used courtesy of a Creative Commons permission.

And the Winner is ...

...Sherrinda Ketchersid!  Sherrinda has won a Margaret Evans Porter book for leaving a comment on Margaret's blog about gardens and roses.  Congratulations, Sherrinda!

Invent A Holiday

 Pat Rice here:

Since tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, it seemed obvious for a romance writer to write about love, but the wenches covered the entire day front to back very nicely a few years ago.  Here’s the link if you want your holiday fix: http://wordwenches.typepad.com/word_wenches/2007/02/index.html
Some incredibly yummy info in there—enjoy.

So I, perverse critter (and lover of paranormal) that I am, decided to expound upon Friday the 13th. If you didn’t realize that’s what today is, wake up!  Over 21 million people live in terror of today.  Scientific studies have been done showing millions of people stay home, disrupting workforces and reducing traffic on any given Friday the 13th. And why?  Probably because a fiction writer in 1907 expounded upon some ancient superstitions and named his book FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH (that's the cover on the right), thus popularizing the theory that the rare juxtaposition of unlucky 13 and unlucky Friday make the day doubly unfortunate.

Ah, the power of the pen! If you want more information on the history behind the superstition, check out my post from 2007: http://wordwenches.typepad.com/word_wenches/2007/02/index.html

Today, I’d rather use the power of my keyboard to invent a new superstition—my suggestion would be that a Friday the 13th prior to Valentines Day should cancel the bad luck and mean love will come your way this year!  (I’ll refrain from calling it St Pat’s Day, though. “G”)  Anyone else have a better suggestion?

The history of both days gives you a wealth of material with which to work:  The Nordic goddess of love, Freya, for whom Friday was named became a 13th member of the traditional witch’s coven of 12; thirteen was revered in matriarchal goddess-worshipping societies for the thirteen menstrual cycles in a year (take that ye patriarchs!); and St Valentine was probably a (male) Christian cover-up to add morality to the Roman Lupercalia, when the dawn of spring and fertility rites were celebrated. (Did pagans celebrate anything besides fertility?) Go ahead, invent your own holiday!

And while you’re thinking, take a look at my new cover!  MYSTIC WARRIOR is the last of the trilogy and will be out in July, but it’s a nice bright Valentine red, so I thought readers might appreciate it.  And I’m in the process of updating the website at www.patriciarice.com, so you should be able to check out an excerpt, if Friday the 13th doesn’t cast its shadow!

Garden History for Historical Readers and Writers

For those of us in northern climes, February is a season of snow and ice and cold.  A season when gardeners start looking in flower catalogues and dreaming of spring and summer. Hence, it’s a perfect time to invite Renaissance Woman Margaret Evans Porter to talk about English historical gardens.  Margaret, the floor is yours!  (Chorus of trumpets!) 

MEP: In ancient days, the beauty of gardens was appreciated as much as their utility, which is why illuminated manuscripts often feature flowers.  In medieval monasteries and convents, the faithful cultivated crops for the table, herbs for healing and flavouring food and making medicines.  They raised hops for ale, grapes for wine-making.  Even roses had their purpose, as is obvious from the name given an old gallica—the Apothecary Rose.

Secular folk grew food, too, but they created the pleasaunce, where plants were grown purely to pleasure the senses rather than the palate, on walls and trellises.  Gardens became associated with romance—troubadours fingered their lutes in flowery arbors.  Henry VIII courted most of his six wives in garden settings!

Extensive and well-landscaped grounds—like a fine house—signified a man’s influence in the world.  Monarchs and the nobility imported, at great expense, French and Dutch gardeners and landscapers.  Charles II brought Le Notre of France, famed for his work at Versailles, to re-arrange St. James’s Park, with formal avenues of trees and a canal.  Hothouses kept tender plants warm; orangeries supplied blooms and fruit in cold seasons.  After the tulip craze of the early 17th century, the auricula became all the rage.  They were grown in narrow clay pots—Long Toms—arranged tier upon tier, for decorative effect. (And are still, in UK flower shows!)

John Evelyn, a skilled gardener, was an early “garden tourist,” touring famous gardens and the nursery operations that supplied plants.  Like her uncle Charles II, Queen Mary II was especially interested in “exoticks”—Dutch and English explorers provided specimens from across the globe.  At Hampton Court her orangery for tropical plants was recently restored.  Her contemporary, the Duchess of Beaufort, was the greatest plant collector of that era.

At that time Dutch flower painters created lush canvases of “cabbage roses”—the many-petaled centifolia—to adorn fine houses.  Virtually all rose species and hybrids bloomed only in late May, June, July.  This gives the poetic line, “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,” a significance we overlook.  And colour selection was limited to white, pinks, reds, and vari-colored or striped varieties.  The ancient “Four Seasons Rose,” also known as the Autumn Damask, bloomed intermittently from May till about October—in England. (And, incidentally, from June till October in my own New Hampshire garden.)  It existed centuries before Christ, and in the Mediterranean probably did bloom year-round.  With the introduction of China roses into England in the latter 18th century, repeat bloomers could be grown or created.

The greatest rose lover of the Napoleonic era bore the name Rose, although she is more famous to us as Josephine Bonaparte.  French hybridists worked constantly to stock her extensive gardens at Malmaison.  During her husband’s protracted wars with Britain, despite blockades, the Empress of France could purchase cultivars from the English nurserymen! 

The formal 17th and early 18th century gardens were swept away late in the 18th century, when the artificially “natural” landscapes of Capability Brown and Humphrey Repton came to the fore.  Repton’s Red Books contained fold-out panels so his well-heeled clients could see “before” and “after” images.  (In my novel The Proposal, my rose-loving, garden-designing heroine is highly critical of Repton’s methods.)

Avenues of centuries-old trees were uprooted, replaced by “clumps.”  Formal canals and pools were replaced with meandering streams or ornamental lakes.  Entire villages were razed to open up an extensive vista, and new housing created at a distance. Certain imports—particularly rhododendrons and fuchsias—naturalized all over Britain.  To prevent errors, authors can check dates of introduction for plant species, as well as histories of cultivars.

For every action there is a re-action. The Victorians re-imposed artificiality and—typically—fussiness.  Repton the eradicator was himself eradicated, so nowadays his landscapes are few and far between.  The latter 19th century became the great era of carpet bedding to achieve a massed effect of similar or contrasting colours.  The hybridisation of roses, especially in France and Germany, ran rampant from the 1830’s onward.  Blossoms grew ever larger and the plants bloomed more and more abundantly.

In closing, I admit my preferences.  As my mother does, I tend to grow old plants—often hardier and more reliable than hybrids.  I grow many roses of the 17th and 18th and 19th centuries.  Their fragrance is unmatched, their soft, ruffled beauty, to my eye, is preferable to the rigidity of the modern florist-style hybrid tea rose.

Because old garden roses don’t re-bloom, I spend June and July frantically photographing and picking and sniffing.  Fortunately, the English hybridist David Austin has done an admirable job propagating “old look” re-blooming roses, which almost match the fragrance of the originals.  Eglantyne, pictured below, is a dead-ringer for a 17th century centifolia!

Just for the Wenches, I’ve created a site to share flowering plants and bloom times for the 17th-18th-19th centuries, with illustrations  from my own gardens.    www.margaretevansporter.com/gardeninfo.html

I also feature my personal collection of historic roses on my website.  www.margaretevansporter.com/roses.html

Many thanks to the Wenches for inviting me back to indulge in my love of flowers, at a time when my own are dormant and covered by several feet of snow!

MJP: And many thanks for visiting again, Margaret!  (If we’re really, really good, maybe someday she’ll return to tell us about French and Italian historical gardens. <g>)  Be sure to click on Margaret's links--the flowers are gorgeous!

  Anyone who leaves a comment between now and Thursday at midnight will be eligible to win the copy of Margaret’s Regency historical romance, The Proposal.  (And what a lovely, garden-y cover it is, too.)

Mary Jo, thinking flowery thoughts

Edith on Valen-time

Felled by a particularly nasty bout of the stomach flu, Edith is lying on the chaise with a lavender-scented handkerchief on her face. She has asked me to invoke the Wench Classic Clause and resurrect one of her old posts to fill today's blog spot. Since Valentine's Day is just around the corner, I've chosen her Valentine's Day post from two years ago. The sentiment holds as true today as it did then. Edith, here's hoping you are back to your chipper self by the 14th! ~Sherrie

Happy Valentine's Day to all!

But this message is meant specially for those who may - momentarily - not have a specific Valentine this year. Hey, it happens. It happens to the rich, the beautiful, and the clever.

It also happens to the very very cute.

But Valentine's Day, like most major American holidays, has a way of making those who can't participate in it feel like losers: left out, unworthy and forgotten.

HOGWASH! And FOO!

You know you are loved, or were loved, or will be loved. And that if you had a Valentine right now, he'd out-hero any romantic hero.

Lonely hearts unite!

So, what to do until next year,when your true love will doubless be near?

Be your own best Valentine.

Treat yourself to something chocolate. Wallow in roses. Drink something that bubbles - other than seltzer. Think of those people you do love, have loved, and will love. Love yourself, you're worth it.

If you're still feeling low, remember that life is not a Norman Rockwell illustration. Think of all the people you know who also don't have a Valentine.

And realize that no one special day, not even dear Saint Valentine's, means that much. Love is a lifetime affair, and can happen any day, anywhere.

And does.

Hearts unleashed!

Much love to you all!

Margaret Evans Porter Here February 11

Honorary Word Wench and Renaissance Woman Margaret Evans Porter will return to the Word Wenches on Wednesday, February 11th, to talk about Historic Gardens.  And what better time to talk of gardening than in the depths of winter?

Wench Classic: The Wenches Consult Dr. Josh

Another in a continuing (if random) series of classic Word Wenches blogs: the first time Dr. Josh visited Word Wenches to answer a few questions about historical medicine.

Without further ado -- heeeeeere's Dr. Josh!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Wenches are delighted to welcome Dr. Josh King!

Dr. King graduated summa cum laude from University of Maryland, earned his M.D. from Penn State College of Medicine, and is now a 3rd year resident physician in internal medicine -- soon to be Chief Resident in Internal Medicine -- at University of Virginia.
He has lots of experience answering medical questions for writers, since he's the eldest son of Wench Susan Sarah, who regularly asks him how to get rid of villains, or how to strategically afflict and then treat heroines and heroes. He has also come up with some creative ways to poison and dose a few eleventh-century characters....

A word of warning, if you have a squeamish tummy for medical stuff, or are just about to eat a meal, you may want to proceed with care as you read his answers....

Dear Dr. Josh,
I am desperately curious about how people dealt with gonorrhea, how long they might have lived with it, and whether there was anything they might have done to alleviate symptoms (and imagine themselves cured) in days before antibiotics.  Circa 1817, Lord Byron talks about getting the clap from this one and that one, which made me wonder. My 1887 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica has some fascinatingly insane stuff about syphilis (like how it eventually goes away by itself or how one should give mercury to a syphilitic pregnant woman) but very little about gonorrhea.
                                                                                            -- Loretta

Dr. Josh: Gonorrhea's been around for a while... Galen named it way back in the 2nd century. Essentially, before antibiotics, it was treated the same as syphilis - with mercury! Actually, the two were often confused back then, and people were often coinfected. Since the symptoms of gonorrhea (burning on urination) often went away after a few weeks, it was often thought to have disappeared (although reinfection / reactivation of symptoms was common). Sulfa antibiotics came around in the 1930s, becoming the first treatment with any degree of reliability. Basically, my impression is that people just got used to it burning when they urinated.  That's not all that uncommon, even today, as I've had patients who tolerate the symptoms for a long time before finally coming in for treatment.

Another note on syphilis - as far as the Great Pox (or, as the medical profession occasionally calls syphilis, the Great Imitator - so-called because its manifestations may be more protean than any other disease), there were quite a few treatments.  Many of them were used for other sexually transmitted infections 'cause they couldn't tell which one was bothering them. Mercury was often used to treat venereal disease, as was guaiacum, the prepared sap of the guaiacum tree, since as early as the 15th-16th c. The final stage of syphilis is neurological involvement leading to madness; mercury toxicity can result in, you guessed it, madness (mercury also being the cause of 18th-19th c. mad hatter's disease, or erethism, as mercury was used in the preparation of felt).... So a lot of people went crazy for one of the two reasons.

(Johnny Depp in The Libertine, as the Earl of Rochester-- before The Syph got him)

Dear Dr. Josh,
This is of interest to me, too, since all of my present group of characters seem to die one way or another from venereal disease. Dr. Josh has helped my research with this matter before, but I'd be curious about what kind of hereditary effects (if any) "poxed" parents would transmit to their offspring.                                -- Susan Holloway Scott

Dr. Josh: Quite a few. To use the vernacular medicalese, vertically translated (meaning from mother to child at birth) syphilis is associated with significant badness. The symptoms can be severe enough to cause stillbirth and early infant death. At first, the new baby has a runny nose, which is often followed by a severe, peeling rash over the entire body. If you cultured these lesions, you'd find them teeming with the bacterium that causes syphilis. The infection can then involve any organ in the body, including liver, kidneys, and lungs.  If the infant survives without treatment, they then enter a latent period, where they may slowly develop bony and tooth deformities, eye problems, and neurosyphilis leading to psychiatric problems including psychosis and dementia.  Not so good.  Usually, mothers who acquire the disease during pregnancy are at greater risk to transmit it to their baby, as the organism is more active early on.

Dr. Josh, I've heard that maggots were used to clean infection from wounds, which was gross but effective. Any comments on that?  -- Mary Jo Putney 

Josh, I'd also like to hear more about the treatment of wounds. I was very surprised to
read that stitching wounds wasn't done before antibiotics because they had to drain. Greater depth on that would be useful. Also, could you give us a guess on what sword and gunshot wounds were probably survivable in the past, and which probably weren't?
                                                  -- Jo Beverly

Dr. Josh: I combined these two questions ...  The problem with stitching infected wounds is that doing so basically gives the bacteria a nice warm pocket to form abscesses.  In fact, we often don't stitch together traumatic wounds if they're really dirty - we approximate the skin, slap some bandages over them and let them heal over weeks to months on their own, while giving them antibiotics.  Wounds created in the operating room are sterile, so it's OK to stitch them up.

In terms of wound treatment, cautery was not always done because it caused death from tissue damage, later infection, and fluid loss. Of course, it was often done because not doing it often caused death from immediate blood loss.  Maggots have several beneficial attributes - they disinfect wounds by killing bacteria, largely remove necrotic (dead) tissue, which stands the highest chance of getting infected, and stimulate wound healing through partially understood mechanisms.  Nowadays, they are uncommonly used for patients with chronic wounds resistant to other forms of healing - I've only heard of them being used once or twice in my experience, and each time in a patient who was riddled with skin infections.  I don't know much about herbal poultices and such, but my gut feeling is that the most important purpose they served was to avoid dehydration through open wounds - we often use wet gauze for the same purpose today, depending on the type of wound/burn.

Survivable wounds... basically, any gun wound that ruptures a major blood vessel, the heart, or perhaps the spleen would be likely to cause a fatal internal hemorrhage.  Rupturing the intestines would be fatal, as they'd cause infection.  Actually, a shot to the head (if it didn't rupture a blood vessel) might be one of the more survivable.  Shoulder, arm, leg oughta be possible to survive.  Chest wound that punctured a single lung might be survivable, often not - you'd have to get lucky and miss the aorta, its large branches, and the heart.  Basically, internal bleeding kills you in a very short period, infection within hours to a few days.  Same principles for sword wounds, but figure that a sword wound is more likely to cause severe tissue damage, bleeding, and infection in any area - so a shot to the leg might be survivable, but a deep cut to a muscular area of the leg would stand a greater chance of killing you from deep tissue infection (gangrene-like) or blood loss.

Could you also talk about how midwifery was more a woman's affair?  -- Mary Jo

Dr. Josh: Midwivery...well, I don't know much about it, though I did my share in OB/Gyn rotations. I know that historically, men typically stayed away, including doctors (unless cases were complex), since it was considered a "woman's affair" as Mary Jo says.
In fact, this changed only in the 20th century, with (largely male) doctors getting in on the action. 
However, history is coming full circle in the 21st century, with women being far more likely to go into OB/Gyn than men - my experience with current OB residency programs is that they're comprised of 80-90% (or higher) women.  I'll just conclude with a brief suggestion that anyone considering the use of a midwife today is best advised to seek the services of a nurse midwife in a hospital in case a cesarean is necessary - there's a reason infant mortality is far lower today than in ages past, and it's not related to skill in delivering a baby (although nowadays we do have salad spoons, as Bill Cosby calls them).

Dear Dr. Josh,
Could you comment on plot-amnesia? I know novelists use amnesia shamelessly (I certainly have), and I've read some really interesting stuff about fugue states that aren't really organic in nature, but it could be interesting to hear him on the subject.
            -- Mary Jo

Dr. Josh: Ah, amnesia! A concept far more common in fiction than reality.  The only time I've ever encountered classic amnesia is in books, and I'm not talking about medical texts.  The novelists' version of amnesia does occur, albeit very rarely; far more common is a selective memory loss of recent events associated with aging and dementia (not too useful to most novelists) and substance abuse (also not too useful to most novelists, although there's a certain subset). 
There is a condition known as transient global amnesia where people lose their memory of recent events, but still tend to retain distant memories (the thought being that they are more 'hard-wired' into the brain).  Frankly, no one really knows why it occurs, although there's some thought that it's somewhat stroke-like, and no one knows why it gets better.  Because of this uncertainty, feel free to exploit at will - no one can fault you scientifically.

Dear Dr. Josh,
My question has to do with comas.  I've been told that people in comas sometimes hear, but cannot respond.  My ex-husband went into a diabetic coma when he was 13, and though he was immobile and couldn't open his eyes or speak, he remembered hearing the doctor telling his mother he was going to die, and his mother crying.

Is it possible to bring a person out of a coma (or speed their recovery) by external stimulation, such as reading or talking to them, or playing music, or by touching them?  If not, then is it possible for a person who comes out of a coma on their own (whatever that is!) to remember things that were said to them while they were in a coma?
                                                                        -- Sherrie Holmes

Dr. Josh: Well, coma is a tricky word... it basically refers to a level of unconsciousness, which can be due to a number of different conditions.  Novelists' comas are like novelists' amnesia - useful in a plot sense, but not very realistic.

Coma states vary in the level to which they alter someone's level of consciousness - we have multiple scoring systems used to evaluate them.  They can be short-lived, often seen with severe infections requiring hospitalization, shock from blood loss, metabolic disturbances (as your husband had), or drug-induced (e.g., modern anesthesia intentially induces a comatose state with short-acting drugs continuously infused).  These are usually completely or nearly completely reversible, depending on the amount of permanent brain damage.

Longer comas usually result from a neurological insult - stroke, bleeding inside the head, brain damage from shock, or, as we commonly see, brain damage after cardiac resuscitation (loss of blood flow for minutes can cause very profound levels of brain damage.  Those are usually reversible to a certain extent, but with increasing severity of the coma, the likelihood of a person emerging decreases.  However, people can come out of them after either months or decades; the bad news is that they often have persistent neurological deficits.

As for your question, well, it depends on what caused the coma, and I assume you mean a longer coma (though I could be wrong).  Modern medical science doesn't really have a good answer as to whether external stimulation can bring someone out of a coma.  But since people rarely accept this as an answer, why should you?  Many friends & family members of patients say they feel that stimulation helps their loved one to be more aware.  I honestly haven't seen it myself as yet, but stimulation is unlikely to make matters worse.

Dr. King returns now and then to address topics in historical medicine, especially maladies and injuries that may afflict fictional characters ... be sure to watch Word Wenches for the next "Dear Dr. Josh" column!

Meanwhile, if you're curious about historical and medieval medicine, you may want to check out this link to an informative video clip featuring "Theodoric of York, Medieval Barber" ....

When the lights go out

Anne here pondering about weather and power and light...

Recently it seems like people all over the world are having extreme weather, often accompanied by power blackouts. In North America it's blizzards and ice-storms; in Australia, it's record heat waves, lightning strikes, bushfires, cyclones or floods, depending where you live. And no power...

We're so dependent on electricity that we take it completely for granted — until it goes.

And then, suddenly, you realize how very dependent we've become on it for all sorts of things and I don't just mean for serious things, though one friend of mine was without power in below freezing conditions, another lost several weeks worth of food that thawed and spoiled, and another was flooded and couldn't phone for help as her cordless phone battery had gone flat and there was no way to recharge it. The power failures caused really serious problems for many, many people.

But not for me. I wasn't in any danger or even seriously inconvenienced. I was just hot. It was our third day of 45º heat (that's 113º F) and the house, the dog and I were hot. But in the city people were stuck in lifts for hours in the heat, and stuck in packed trains, unable to get the electricity operated doors open. For them it was truly dreadful. 

But not for me. My only problem—and it wasn't really a problem—was that I was bored. It was too hot to do housework or anything physically active. I couldn't listen to music, work on the computer, do the washing, or do anything useful (I told myself.) So I did what comes naturally — I started reading a book.

All well and good, you say, but then the light started to go, and the print started to fade. Simple, I hear you say — light a candle. I did, but still found myself squinting at the print. Light another one, you say — yes, but it was 113ºF and I wasn't going to add to the heat if I could help it. 

So I sat there, pondering my problem, doing nothing useful, and thinking how not so long ago, we lived without power. For me it's a living memory. When I was born, my parents were in a "back to the land" phase, and living in an area where the electricity grid hadn't yet reached, so until I was four, we didn't have electric light. My mother came home from a full days teaching in a hot army hut school building, teaching 40+ little kids, none of whom spoke English. At the end of the day she came home, cooked a meal for a family of six on a wood stove, did all the washing by hand, boiling the sheets up in a big copper kettle and who knows what else? 

Of course she was clearly barking mad, doing all of this when we could have lived in town and had electricity and all the mod cons, and by now you're wondering why I'm telling you this, but I'm taking you through my very slow thought processes at the time (After 3 days at 113ºF  the synapses fire slowly.) So, I was reading a good book and didn't want to put it down and the light was fading and it was, I felt, too hot to light two candles.

And thus my mind turned very naturally to the sweat shops of London, where hapless women were crammed into rooms to squint over a seam or a hem or fine, delicate embroidery, for which they were paid a pittance. The conditions were appalling and the light was worse because, of course, candles and lamp oil were expensive. The cheap candles threw, at best, a feeble light and were smelly and smoky. Fine sewing for long hours in poor light ruined the seamstresses' eyesight. As finishing this book in the fading twilight was likely to do to mine (see, there is a point to all this.)

As I considered my problem, I remembered that seamstresses used to put a candle behind a glass globe filled with water, which acted as a lens. Would this work for me? I wondered. So I experimented. 

I lit a candle and took a photo of a book - that's it, above. No flash of course.  Then without moving the candle or the book, I put a bowl of water in front of the flame and took another photo from the same position. Thirdly I tried using a large plastic bottle of water to see if that could be a lens, too. It could. It made an appreciable difference, as you can see.   

It was a bit tricky for reading; you had to move the page around a bit to get the best light, but it was clearly a workable alternative. 

Then the power came back on, so I experimented no further.

When it came time to write this blog, I did a search for some nice historical images of hapless seamstresses. There is a distinct lack — mostly there are paintings of a nice middle-class woman sewing by the window of a large, well lit room, or sitting outside in some idyllic setting, in the grass or on a rock. (You can tell the artists never had to get grass stains out of white cotton!) I could find no images of women in a sweatshop bending over a sputtering tallow candle, catching its light through a bowl of water.

But I did find this account by a Mrs. Roberts of Northamptonshire of how light was provided for a large number of lacemakers, in the school she attended in the early 19th century: 

"In the evenings eighteen girls worked by one tallow candle, value one penny; the 'candle-stool' stood about as high as an ordinary table with four legs. In the middle of this was what was known as a 'pole-board' with 6 holes in the circle and one in the centre. In the centre was a long stick with a socket for the candle at one end, and peg holes through the sides, so that it could be raised and lowered at will. In the other six holes were placed pieces of wood hollowed out like a cup and into each of these was placed a bottle made of very thin glass and filled with water. These bottles acted as strong condensers or lenses, and the eighteen girls sat round the table, three to each bottle, their stools being upon different levels, the highest near the bottle, which threw the light down on the work like a burning glass."

[Quoted in Findings By Mary Carolyn Beaudry. p157 Published by Yale University Press, 2006]

Anyway, I finished my book in bright electric light, basking in a cool air conditioned breeze and feeling very grateful that I wasn't born a seamstress in a sweatshop in the early 19th century.

What about you? Have you had any extreme weather or power blackouts recently? What problems did it cause? Tell us about it.

Home, sweet home. But where?

I'm off to England for a month in March (don't worry, I'll be blogging from there), which is a first step toward possibly moving back to England this year. On the left is Billy, ready to explore.

As you can imagine that's both exciting and, literally, unsettling. There are so many little details to attend to, but they aren't a huge hurdle. The majority of people never emigrate from their home country. Most never seriously consider it. Some of us take it in our stride. I call it the nomadic gene.

British people seem to have that gene quite strongly, and Americans not much at all. At first glance the explanation could be that in a nation of mostly immigrants, like America, Canada, Australia etc once people are settled, they're happy to stay that way. Do you think that's true? It might be logical to think of it the other way around -- that people who left a homeland already had a bit of the nomad in them.

I'm not sure it works the other way around. The people of most European countries don't seem to feel the same drive to head around the world just because. Mind you, I found this caricature on Allposters.com.

It's called "Place! Place!, Caricature of the Returning Emigrants, 1815." Clearly a different kind of immigrant -- the pre-revolution exiled aristocracy returning to France after the fall of Napoleon and the restoration of the Bourbons.

Many people through history have been forced to leave their native lands, of course.

Have you ever thought about emigration? If you think you'd like to try it, where would you go? Are you an emigrant? What are your feelings about it?

On writing, I have long realized that one of my themes in my books is the need for a home. In some books it's explicit, but it's there in all of them. My happy ending requires a really good home. I remember reading a friend's book, and it was wonderful until the end, where they basically wandered off to find a place. I wailed at her, "That's so sad!" She was bemused. "But they have each other. They'll be fine."

"No, no, no," I complained. "I need to see it. I need it fixed and believable. Each other, AND the right home for their happy future. Preferably with the right community around them as well. And if possible, that it's very likely they'll stay there."

Do you share this need for a home for the "happy ending" or are you okay with the happy together couples sailing away, or heading west on a wagon train, or taking a spaceship to the stars?

Recognizing my focus on homes showed that being a nomad can leave dislocations, and that a bit of me was not entirely at home, which was the beginning on this idea of "going home." And after all, if home isn't there, we can come back to Canada, or go elsewhere.

I have a couple of writing things to clear away before we go for our try-out month. One was the proposal for my next book, tentatively titled The Secret Duke, sent off a few days ago. I'll be talking more about that, and the title, in time.

The other is finishing a grail novella for A Chalice of Roses, the next project by the "Faery Four" -- me, Mary Jo, Karen Harbaugh and Barbara Samuels. Did I mention that Barbara has a new book out under the writing name Barbara O'Neal? The Lost Recipe for Happiness (recipes included) is flying off shelves. Check out her web site. 

My story is medieval, and can be summed up as "a nun discovers she must find and marry a mystical knight to manifest the Grail and bring peace to England. She's not happy about it."

Once that's done, I can head of for a month on the Devon coast with nothing hanging over my head but the final decision. I will be working there, though, because we want to act as if we're living there, not just on holiday.

Here's where we'll be staying
which is more or less in the picture, with the small town of Dawlish in the distance. Amusingly, the best pictures of this area come from train buffs, because a railway line runs along the coast, as seen here. It's a regular working train line, but also a very scenic one.
(Picture source Geoff Sheppard, Creative Commons.)

Oh, and I'm beginning promo for The Secret Wedding, of course. As always with books, most of it is out of my hands, but I like to keep my readers informed. I've come up with a one-liner for it. "Getting married is just the beginning of their problems."

Happy February! Spring is getting closer all the time. I saw snowdrops here yesterday.

Jo :)

We Have a Winner!

. . . and her name is glee.  Glee, you have won a copy of Karen Harper's book, Mistress Shakespeare. 

Please send your full name and mailing address to Sherrie, and we'll pass it on to Karen.  Congratulations, glee!

Karen Harper, Honorary Word Wench!

Yes, we know, we know, Karen was already named an Honorary Word Wench after her last visit, with all the attendant privileges and benefits.  But in this inaugural year when it seems that if it’s a good thing to say something once, then it’s even better to say it twice, we’ll happily anoint Karen yet again, and offer her a splendid bouquet of Tudor Roses, too. 

Many thanks for stopping by, Karen, and all the best wishes with MISTRESS SHAKESPEARE  in this merrie month of February!