Word Wenches

A Wee Tipple on the Lore of Single Malt Scotch

Cara/Andrea here,
  As some of you may know, I have, by virtue of default, I think, been elected Wench Team Captain of Sports and Spirits (er, no, no—not the rah-rah kind, the intoxicating kind.) This past summer, I laced on my spikes and took you on a walk through the fairways of golf history. But now, as the winter pervades the air here in the Northeast and the  pace slows to celebrate the holidays with family and friends, it seems the perfect time to turn to golf’s 19th hole (for all you non-golfers, that’s the bar) and take a wee tipple into the origins and traditions of Scotland’s national drink—single malt whisky.

Uisge Beatha
There’s a great Gaelic bruhahha over who actually invented whisky. Most historians agree it was probably the Irish, as there are 12th century documents making reference to it.  So the Scots merely claim that they perfected the spirit. The earliest mention of distilling in Scotland dates from 1494, when an official record notes that a certain Friar John Cor of Dunfermline purchased malt to make “acquavitae’—which is Latin for water of life.

In Gaelic, the phrase is “uisge beatha” . . . which somehow turned into “whisky” in English. (No doubt after the speaker had imbibed several glasses of the brew.)  Note that yet another brangling between the Scots and the Irish occurred over spelling. In Scotland, it’s always “whisky” while in Ireland and the rest of the world it’s “whiskey.”

What IS Whisky?

Which begs the question of what exactly IS whisky. I’m glad you asked. Many countries make whiskey, but what we’re going to talk about here is “scotch” in its  purest form. To begin with, single malt (We’ll get to that term later) whisky is made from barley—-and only barley. Golden Promise is the the most popular variety, but each individual distillery has its favorite, depending on local growing conditions..

Earth, Wind & Fire
The grain is soaked in water and allowed to germinate, forming “malt.” (A grain is said to be malted when its core starches covert to sugar.) This malt is then dried over heat—usually oven a peat fire—and ground to a coarse grist, Once again it’s soaked in hot water and yeast is added to ferment it. The resulting alcoholic slush is distilling in pot-shaped copper stills. (Alcohol boils at a lower temperature than water, so its essence can be concentrated and collected as . . . uisge beatha.

Heart of Oak
Scottish law specifies that “real” scotch must be aged in wooden casks for a minimum of three years within Scotland, but many are, like fine wine, aged for considerably longer. The only wood allowed is oak, and the preferred species are Quercus alba (White American oak) and Quercus robur (European oak.) Single malt distilleries traditionally usually use old sherry or bourbon casks, as the residue of those spirits is said to impart a subtle flavoring to the whisky.

The Singles Bar
Now that we have the basics down, let’s move on to the fine points. The term “single malt” means that the whisky has to come from the same distillery. (If you look on a label and see “Blended Scotch whisky” that means it a mix of a variety of brews from around the country.) Most distilleries are small because of the hand crafting involved, and their products are very distinctive because of the local ingredients. Water, peat, barley—even the surrounding rocks—affect the taste. On the other hand, blended whisky usually aims to create a uniform flavor from batch to batch.

The Art of Malt
Single malt distillers think of themselves as artists, creating a unique work through a magical combination of ingredients, fermentation and aging. All the steps require tweaking and special techniques, which they jealously guard.  Now, you be asking, how different can it be? The answer is—very!

Scotland is a country of varied terrain and microclimates. The coast is flavored by brine and seaweed, the Highlands by granite and peat. Speyside is known for its elegance and refined smokiness while the wind-lashed whisky island of Islay produces sturdy, strong, iodine-tinged brews. Some people are adamant that the rock and soil over which the local water flows influences the taste—marshy land imparts a grassy taste while the sandstone of the northeast creates a firm-bodied whisky.

In other words, whisky has much in common with wine, where terroir and temperature affect the regional vintages. I never knew that until I visited Scotland and attended a single malt tasting. It was fun to sample a sip from the different regions—there are close to 200 single malt distilleries!—and the difference among them really is amazing. (Not that I sampled 200. I take my research seriously, but not that seriously. Hey, I have to actually write, not snooze.)

Wee Tipples
The oldest of the modern distilleries date back to the early 1700’s. (Some random facts: Justerini & Justerini, the legendary London wine merchants, first sold whisky in 1779. John Dewar, who started his business in 1806, was the first person to sell whisky in bottles.) The phylloxera blight, which destroyed so many French vineyards in the late 1800’s, helped popularize the spirit outside of Scotland, for along with wine, much of the cognac production was disrupted and people turned to whisky as an alternative.  Today, of course, it is one of the world’s classic spirits, sipped neat or with just a single drop of water to stir the flavors. (Like fine wines, single malts are never served “on the rocks.”)

Scotch Hot Toddy:
Take a glass and add a spoonful of sugar and a spoonful of honey (Scottish heather honey would be best), add a shot of whisky, and fill the glass with very hot or boiling water.

Even better, here’s a recipe for a cake flavored with whisky:

Chocolate Whisky Bundt Cake
Makes 12 to 14 servings

1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (not Dutch-process) plus 3 T for dusting pan
1 1/2 cups brewed coffee
1/2 cup Scotch whisky
2 sticks unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch pieces
2 cups sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla

1.  Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 325ºF. Butter 3 qt. (10”) bundt pan well, then dust with 3 tablespoons cocoa powder, knocking out excess.
2.  Heat coffee, whisky, butter, and remaining cup cocoa powder in a 3-quart heavy saucepan over moderate heat, whisking, until butter is melted. Remove from heat, then add sugar and whisk until dissolved, about 1 minute. Transfer mixture to a large bowl and cool 5 minutes.
3.  While chocolate mixture cools, whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl. Whisk together eggs and vanilla in a small bowl, then whisk into cooled chocolate mixture until combined well. Add flour mixture and whisk until just combined (batter will be thin and bubbly). Pour batter into bundt pan and bake until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean, 40 to 50 minutes.
4.  Cool cake completely in pan on a rack, about 2 hours. Loosen cake from pan using tip of a dinner knife, then invert rack over pan and turn cake out onto rack.

I have to admit, I’m not much of a single malt whisky drinker, though once in a while, on a cold winter night, I do sip a glass of Glenmorangie or Balvenie. Do you enjoy a glass of scotch and if so, do you have a favorite single malts? If you don’t drink it, what image comes to mind when you hear the word? I always think of Cary Grant in one of those swanky ‘30s comedies when I think of whisky.

How about any other great whisky recipes?  Please feel free to share—-after all, we’re got lots of holiday baking to do!

Sipping Tea, Georgian Style

 

If man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty. 
        Japanese Proverb

Joanna here, dipping into the subject how we drink tea, Eighteenth Century style.
Is there no Latin word for Tea?  Upon my soul, if I had known that I would have let the vulgar stuff alone.
        Hilaire Belloc

 

No Latin for tea because tea didn't travel the silk roads all the way to the west.  In Roman times, tea was an entirely Chinese secret.  Tea only made it to Europe about 1600, the Dutch and the Portuguese carrying it home along with the other spoils of oriental trade. 

 

It was the Age of Enlightenment. 
The Age of Exploration.  
The Age of Discovery. 
Europeans needed more than ale to fortify them for these earthshaking events.  They took to tea, coffee and chocolate like ducks to watercress.  

Within a half century of landing in Europe -- lickety-split as these things go -- tea established itself in England.  A 1657 advertisement offers it at Thomas Garraway's coffee house:

“This excellent beverage, recommended by all Chinese doctors, and which the Chinese call ‘Tcha’, other nations ‘Tay’ or ‘Tee’, is on sale at Sultaness Mead close to the Royal Exchange in London.”

Author Real Life aside here:  The fortune cookie I got at lunch today -- my fortune cookies keep trying to teach me Chinese, which is kind of them, of course -- tells me that 'teapot' is ch'a ha. 
This is an example of synchronicity. 
It also reminds us that the word for 'tea' or 'chai', like the words for coffee, chocolate, coca cola, television, whiskey and Angelina Jolie, stays about the same all over the world.
 
Returning to the late Seventeenth Century.

Europe, having got hands on tea, also imported lovely cups to drink tea from.  Meissen and Sèvres started making their own porcelains after the Chinese model -- pretty cups, with and without handles, and equally pretty bowl-like saucers for them.    

 

These early Eighteenth Century cups were often on the small side.

This cup, for instance, is only an inch and a half tall.  That's half the size of a teacup today.  It holds about a third as much. 

Look at the size of the cups in some of the pictures below.  You'll agree they are relatively itty bitty.

Folks tended to drink tea in a sip or two and get more fresh from the pot which made the whole tea pouring ceremony more lively, I should imagine. 
When Madame de Sévigné writes, "Saw the Princesse de Tarente . . . who takes 12 cups of tea every day," this does not mean the Princesse was just sloshing with tea.

How did people manage these small and handleless cups?  Pre'y much like this:

         

The making of tea in the early Eighteenth Century, was a drama enacted at the table with a whole bunch of props.  Let's take a look at a tea set.

Starting on the left-hand side, we have the tea pot.  Below that are our handless cups. 

Notice how they seem to have been doled out on the tray upside down. 
Folks did this.  Presumably an upside down cup was not as apt to fall over during transportation.  And things didn't fall into it.
Or something.

 

Continuing anit-clockwise around the tea things we come to the cream pitcher.  Above that is the very large sugar bowl.

That is just an amazing amount of sugar, isn't it? 

Two or three forces at work here making the sugar bowl so big.  The first is that sugar was expensive, so this was conspicuously showing off a luxury good.  The second is that sugar lumps had to be 'nipped off' a big, solid cone shape down in the kitchen.  This was time consuming and awkward so you didn't want to do it all that often.  You laid in a supply.  It's a bit like having a big woodpile.  You can't fit all that into the fireplace, but you like it handy.
The third reason for having a big sugar bowl is that every lump was handmade and idiosyncratic.  You wanted a nice choice.  Probably it was a delicate challenge wondering whether the 'two lumps' Aunt Edith wanted were big lumps or small.

The metalwork on top of the sugar bowl is a pair of sugar tongs, the handle to the right.

Center stage on the tray is bread-and-butter, which was what you got fed at tea in the Eighteenth Century.
This is so wrong.  

Moving our consideration back to the sugar bowl and up a bit, we come to the slops bowl, the final resort of all slops, liquid or solid.  There is a robust realism about an age that provides a slops bowl in the tea service.  Since they moved ash trays off restaurant tables there is nothing remotely resembling this in modern eateries.

If we complete our circuit of the tea tray we come at last to the tall thingum behind the tea pot. The tea canister. 

 
You must imagine an era so primitive they hadn't invented the tea bag.  The robust flavor of cheap paper not yet added to the tea.  Tea came in what might be considered its pretechnological state -- loose dried leaves.  Tea was expensive, so they made pretty and expensive objects to put it in. 

Tea arrived in 'tea canisters' of ceramic or metal.  Beautiful things.  These early 1700s canisters would be placed in a box, with one side for black tea and one for green and a bowl for measuring and mixing. 

By 1800, this box was called a tea caddy, from the Chinese weight, kati, about six hundred grams, (1-1/3 pounds).  Large ones might be called tea chests.

There is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea. 
        Ralph Waldo Emerson

Author real life note here:  I buy a couple sorts of coffee and mix them because it makes me feel powerful and creative.  
 
In Regency times, tea had become less expensive.  There was no need to keep it in the parlor under the eagle-eye of the lady of the house.  Tea was made in the kitchen and brought up on the tea tray.  The tea caddy, (I've been waiting to say this since I saw it in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica,) gradually fell into desuetude.

Now we come to some of the English weird about tea.
First off, the English added sugar and milk. 

Here's how I think that happened. 
Like every newly introduced food, tea was regarded with some suspicion.  In the early 1700s it was still treated as a tonic -- something likely to be good for you.  Often, tea was what you took with the nice healthful milk you were drinking. 

For instance, Madame de Sévigné writes, "It is true, Madame de Sabliere took tea with her milk; she told me so the other day; but it was from choice of taste,"

Milk or cream took the curse off the medicinal tea, as it were.  One sage remarks,
"Tea drinking is doubtless very proper in such cases, (i.e. bilious cholicks and weak nerves,) and especially by the addition of the milk, which renders it more powerful, in blunting the acid points of the bile."  
Useful to know.

When tea got frivolous and became merely a delightful enjoyment, sugar and milk followed it into its new role.

More English strange ensued. 
They poured the tea into the cup.  
They added cream and sugar. 
Then they poured the tea into the saucer. 
Whoa.


Right.  You didn't necessarily drink out of the cup.  Sometimes you drank it out of the saucer.  You had a 'dish of tea'. 

Here we got a couple of folks drinking tea out of their saucer with the greatest gentility.

   
  

Why did they do this?  Why did they drink tea out of a saucer?
To cool it quickly?  Did the English have less patience than the Chinese? 
These were gentlepersons and they had all the time in the world.

Anyways, at this same time folks were complicatedly pouring tea into tea saucers, the same folks were drinking chocolate and coffee out of cups.
I mean, like . . . why? 

Though I have to say the idea of drinking chocolate out of a tippy, flattish bowl seems fraught with peril and I am glad, for the sake of all those lovely fabrics, that folks did not do this.

Here's my theory.
I think they were predisposed to drink tea out of a 'dish' because of porringers.  

A porringer was a bowl sort of affair for dinking broth or caudle or posset.  Posset was a milky drink.  Caudle was a hot drink often given to the sick. 

Here was tea, starting out as a milky medicine or tonic.  Probably the tea 'dish' was seen as equivalent to the porringer.    

There is no trouble so great or grave that cannot be much diminished by a nice cup of tea.
        Bernard-Paul Heroux

 By the mid- to late- Eighteenth Century, tea caught up with its cousins, coffee and chocolate, and graduated to a cup with a handle.  Drinking tea from a 'dish' gradually became old-fashioned and rural and slid slowly down the social scale.  By Victorian times, drinking tea from a saucer was for elderly great aunts, their fretful little dogs, Eastern Europeans, and sturdy workmen on their Elevenses.

Dickens, writing much later, says:
"And yet the washerwoman looked to her afternoon 'dish of tea,' as something that might make her comfortable after her twelve hours' labour; and balancing her saucer on a tripod of three fingers, breathed a joy beyond utterance as she cooled the draught."

 

More author real life stuff.  I remember my father pouring hot coffee into his saucer to drink it when he was in a hurry and wanted it to cool off quickly.

Sticking out your pinky when you drink tea had to wait till tea cups acquired a handle, as you will discover if you attempt to drink tea from a handleless cup and simultaneously hold out your pinky. 
(Don't try this at home.) 

As soon as they had a handle to grip onto, folks lifted the pinky up.  Now whether this was done to indicate delicacy or whether it is that one cannot, in a practical way, fit a multitude of fingers onto one little cup, is unclear. 
I have tried pinky up and pinky down and can't really detect a difference in the flavor of the tea.

Pinkies raised does not seem to have hit coffee drinkers.   Perhaps coffee was considered a more robust drink that had to be kept under firmer control.

  I have not said a word about tea-in-first or milk-in-first.  This is  because I can't get past the 'Why would you add milk?' question.  However, I am of firm opinion in the lemon-slice-before-or-after-the-tea debate. 
The lemon slice is mean to float daintily on top, like the Lady of Shallot, not drown like Ophelia. 

 

 

It's always afternoon tea, somewhere.

        Joanna Bourne 

 

photocredits:  pink flowered tea canister is cc attrib Veronik, sugar cone attrib felix

 

                                               

What's your favorite tea story or quote?  One commenter will win a copy of Forbidden Rose or the modestly clad trade edition of Spymaster's Lady, your choice.

Meet Jennifer Kloester - Georgette Heyer expert

Anne here, introducing my friend and fellow writer, Dr. Jennifer Kloester. Jennifer is the author of the wonderful Georgette Heyer's Regency World, which was first launched in Melbourne (my home city). Of course, being a lifelong Heyer addict, I had to go to the launch, and the rest is... history.

Her book was released in the US in August 2010 and  I'm delighted to present Jennifer Kloester here as a Word Wench guest.  

I should add that if any wenchly reader hasn't read Georgette  Heyer, they're missing something wonderful. I'm asking readers to share their first and favorite Heyer, so there will be a list in the comments to help guide you.

Jen, tell us how you first came to Georgette Heyer's books. What was your first?

I was living with my husband (an engineer) in a small mining town in the remote Star Mountains in Papua New Guinea and the YWCA had a little library in one of the houses which had several Georgette Heyer novels. My first book was Friday’s Child which has been a favourite ever since. I was delighted when I discovered that it was Georgette’s own personal favourite among her Regencies.

What made you decide to study the world Heyer created for your doctoral dissertation?

We had moved to the Middle East in the mid-1990s and I had begun reading Georgette Heyer again. At the time I was studying for my Bachelor of Arts in history and literature as an off-campus student. I had done some study while living in PNG and had taken it up again in Bahrain (it took me thirteen years to eventually get that degree – at the rate of one subject a semester). Anyway, I was having a lovely time re-reading Georgette’s novels and discovering some I hadn’t read and introducing her to friends who didn’t know her work. In 1996 I had the idea of writing a kind of ‘handbook’ to her novels. You know, explaining all the things that might not be familiar to a modern reader - what a barouche looked like and a pelisse, and all about etiquette and dancing and coaches. Things like that.

When I returned home, I finally finished my BA and began working on the handbook. I didn’t really know how to set about it but I made lots of alphabetical lists and a large card index file and slowly worked my way through her historical novels, marking them up as I went. One day I told one of my former lecturers about my project and he sat back in his chair and said ‘that’d make a fantastic PhD’. It was an epiphanic moment and it sent me off to do an Honours degree so that I could apply to do a doctorate.The year I finished the PhD was the year Random House offered me the contract for what became Georgette Heyer’s Regency World.

Your book, Georgette Heyer's Regency World, arose from your thesis. It's now become a popular reference on the Regency era. Has that surprised you?

In a way, although when I wrote the book I did it as a brand new project. It’s true that it is based on a chapter in my thesis (with the same title as it happens) but of course that chapter is a lot shorter than the book and I did almost another thesis’ worth of research for Regency World.

I think that the fact that all the history in my book is inspired by the history in Georgette Heyer’s novels counts for a lot. She was such a meticulous researcher and her ability to weave the historical Regency with her fictional stories is second to none. In that way I’m not so surprised that Regency World has proved to be popular because it has so much Heyer-inspired material in it and I think that comes through. And, of course, the Regency era is enduringly popular.

It's a fascinating read, as well.
For the last five years, you've been working on Georgette Heyer's official biography. It's to be launched next year in London on 6th October. Tell us about it.

I am so excited about the biography. It’s taken ten years of research and five years of writing and I could never have imagined how rewarding it would be. My aim was to bring Georgette to life for her readers and to really show how significant she is in the writing world. She was a fascinating person and someone who internalized much of her life – her outlet was her writing and it’s astonishing just how much she revealed of herself in her books and letters and short stories. 

Writing the biography has been a marvellous journey of discovery, full of twists and turns and unexpected revelations. One of the things I especially loved about writing it was being able to let Georgette tell quite a bit of her own story in her own words. I really hope that readers will enjoy that as much as I did!

I’ve also had the most wonderful support from Georgette’s family. Her son, Sir Richard Rougier,(pictured here as a child with his mother) and her former daughter-in-law, Susannah, Lady Rougier, have been tremendous and as well as giving me all sorts of material they have enabled me to meet most of the people who knew Georgette. I was also really fortunate to get to know Jane Aiken Hodge, Georgette’s first biographer, and she has been the most wonderful friend and counselor. It was really important to me that she was able to read and approve the biography manuscript before she died. 

 You've had unprecedented access to the Heyer family papers, including the fabled notebooks (an example of which is pictured here below). What else have you discovered?

That’s been an incredible part of the writing journey and part of my excitement is due to the discovery of so much new material. Over the past ten years I have discovered several new, untapped archives of Georgette’s personal letters - the earliest of which was written when she was eighteen and had just received the contract for The Black Moth. There are over a thousand pages of letters detailing so much of her writing life, her thoughts, experiences and feelings, it’s been an extraordinary journey of discovery and I really feel that I have come to know Georgette Heyer.

And it’s not only the letters. I’ve also had access to her baby book, written by her mother during the first few years of Georgette’s life. I’ve discovered nine previously unknown short stories, I’ve been able to view and photograph all of the family photo albums. I’ve spent time among the remnants of her library and at the places she used to stay such as Greywalls in Scotland. I’ve followed her research footsteps at the London Library and had access to all the Heyer files at the Random House Archives in Northamptonshire.  I’ve been to her homes in Wimbledon and to her chambers in Albany and her homes in Sussex and so much more. I’ve had so many extraordinary moments of discovery and I feel really lucky and privileged to have taken this journey.

Did anything surprise you?

So many things. For instance, I had never realised just how important Georgette’s early years were to her later writing. She knew so many aspects of Regency life first hand because they still existed when she was a child. I was also surprised by the number of family legends that were actually wrong. Having so many of her early letters has shed new light on a number of things and altered her story considerably. 
It was also fun to discover that she really had lived in a grass hut in Africa. When I was writing my doctorate my supervisor (who was South African) pulled me up on a quotation from Ronald saying that he and Georgette had lived in a grass hut in Tanganyika in the 1920s. My supervisor told me that no English person living in Colonial East Africa had ever really lived in a grass hut and that I had been watching too many Hollywood movies. You can imagine my surprise (and delight) when I was given the family photo albums to study and photograph and found among them the Rougiers’ African album. In it were several photos of Georgette and Ronald in their compound outside their very own GRASS HUT! I loved that in true Georgette style she nicknamed it ‘The Manor House’. 

(Anne here — having seen some of Jen's wonderful Heyer photos I can vouch for the grass hut. It's fabulous!) 

You're a woman of parts; as well as studying the life of Heyer, you study karate. Tell us about Jennifer Kloester and karate.

I’ve found that being a writer is not exactly ideal for my body. Long hours at the computer writing or sitting reading and researching make me feel like the tin man! So four and a half years ago I took up karate. It proved to be the ideal outlet after a day of writing and I got hooked. I began teaching a couple of years ago and have a children’s class which I love. It’s wonderful watching them start out knowing nothing and then week by week seeing them improve and grow in confidence and skill. One of my students (a 13 year old girl) just got her 1st kyu last week and that means her next belt will be her black belt. I am currently a first kyu myself and am hoping to grade to my black belt next year. It means a lot of intense training but it’s good for my brain and my body and it really does help me to write.

Thanks, so much for this interview, Jen, and for sharing with us a little of your encyclopedic knowledge of a brilliant and fascinating author.  
I plan to interview Jennifer again just before the Heyer biography comes out. Last week I spent a blissful day at Jen's  house, where she showed me some her collected material on Heyer —simply superb! I cannot wait for the biography to come out. But in the meantime, there is the delicious GEORGETTE HEYER'S REGENCY WORLD awaiting you.

If you have any questions, I'm sure Jennifer would be glad to answer them.
And I'll ask one question of readers: which was your first Heyer? And which is your favorite?
One lucky commenter will receive a copy of Jennifer Kloester's GEORGETTE HEYER'S REGENCY WORLD

Wild Irish History with Laurel McKee!

Hello, Nicola here, and today it’s my very great pleasure to welcome HWW Amanda McCabe back to the blog. Today Amanda is wearing her Laurel McKee hat and is here to talk about her stunning new book Duchess of Sin, the second in her Daughters of Erin series set in Georgian Ireland. Book 1, Countess of Scandal, was a superb tour de force, awarded Desert Island Keeper status by the All About Romance review site. Romantic Times describes Duchess of Sin as “peopled with fascinating characters.” Laurel was kind enough to give me a taster of Duchess of Sin and I have been anxiously awaiting the publication of the book ever since!

NC: Welcome back to the Word Wenches, Laurel!

LM: Thanks so much for inviting me to the Wenches today, Nicola!  I’m so excited to be here, and I’m also excited to see the release of Duchess of Sin, the story of Lady Anna Blacknall and Conlan McTeer, her wild Irish duke.  I loved meeting Anna in Countess of Scandal and was very nervous to see everything work out for her in her own HEA.  It’s been quite an adventure keeping up with the Blacknall sisters of the Daughters of Erin series, and luckily for me my fun isn’t over just yet—Caroline Blacknall’s story, Lady of Seduction, will be out in June 2011.

NC: We will be looking forward to that! The early nineteenth century is a very complex time in the political history of Ireland and it provides an extremely rich setting for the series. Tell us a little bit about the historical background to Duchess of Sin.

LM: Anna’s story takes place against the background of a very tumultuous moment of change in Irish history.  The hotly contested Act of Union was actually two acts, the first passed as an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain on July 2, 1800 and the second an Act of the Parliament of Ireland on August 1, 1800.  The two acts officially united the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, which came into effect on January 1, 1801 (the time of Duchess of Sin).  In the Republic of Ireland, the first Act was not repealed until the passing of the Republic’s Statute Law Revision Act in 1983. Before these Acts, Ireland was already in personal union with England since 1541, when the Irish Parliament passed the Crown of Ireland Act proclaiming Henry VIII as King of Ireland.  (England and Scotland were united into a single kingdom in 1603 with the accession of King James I). 

NC: Some elements of the Irish Parliament were not too keen on union with Great Britain though, were they?

LM: The Parliament in Dublin had gained a measure of precious independence by the Constitution of 1782, and its members guarded this hard-won freedom fiercely (one of the most notable being Henry Grattan, the hero of the anti-Unionists—he makes a brief appearance in this story at the debates!).  They rejected a motion for Union in 1790 after the upheaval of the Rebellion by 109 votes versus 104.  (Not that the Irish Parliament was a truly democratic body, open to all Irishmen—only Anglican landowners of a certain class could become Members of Parliament and the biggest landowners often controlled the boroughs and thus the vote).  But Britain was scared—the Revolution in France and the Irish Rebellion made them fearful and determined to make the wild Irish settle down once and for all.  The final passage of the Act in the Irish Parliament was achieved in large part by determined bribery, such as awarding peerages, estates, and money to get the needed votes.  The measure passed 158 to 115 amid riots and protests.

NC: It’s often easy to forget that there was no universal franchise and that at times like this political “consensus” was achieved by loading the dice! And of course that was no long-term solution; it simply sowed the seed of discontent for the future. I also found it fascinating in my reading of the period how many connections there were between Revolutionary France and the Irish cause. For instance the last invasion of Britain, which took place in 1797, was undertaken by French troops led by an Irish American colonel. No wonder the British were fearful and wanted to bring the Irish to heel!

 Do you have any recommendations for reading on this period of Irish history?

 LM: A few good sources on the Act of Union and this period in history are: Alan J. Ward’s The Irish Constitutional Tradition: Responsible Government and Modern Ireland, 1782—1992; WJ McCormack’s The Pamphlet Debate on the Union of Great Britain and Ireland; Edward Brynn’s Crown and Castle: British Rule in Ireland, 1800-1830; Patrick Geoghan’s The Irish Act of Union: A Study in High Politics, 1798-1801.

NC: Thank you very much for sharing with us some of the background of your Irish trilogy, Laurel!

LM: Thank you! Nollaig Shona Duit (Merry Christmas) everyone!  I hope you enjoy Anna and Conlan’s story as much as I did.  I’ll give away a signed copy to one commenter today, and be sure and visit my website (http://laurelmckee.net) for excerpts and a December contest!

NC: As Laurel and I both have December releases featuring an Irish ducal hero we are offering not one book but two today, a copy of Laurel’s Duchess of Sin along with my Mistress by Midnight. Feel free to ask anything you like about Duchess of Sin, Irish history, Irish settings, and of course wild Irish heroes!

Deathly conflict

Songs of Love and Death is an ominous title, and the cover is a bit grim. A great design, but dark, and some of the stories in the collection live up to the title. Good stories, but definitely singing a darker tune. On the other side are some stories that sing the brighter songs of love and mine is definitely one of them.

The collection is an interesting mix of science fiction, fantasy, romance, and horror written by some of the best, all blended into a rich feast. With so many authors included, the stories are fairly short, which makes it a great dipping-into book. Definitely an excellent Christmas present for the right reader.

How did I come to be included in Songs of Love and Death? Wench Mary Jo is also in the collection and I'll let her tell the story.

Mary Jo:

George R. R. Martin is a major fantasy author, of  course, and Gardner Dozois is probably the best respected short form editor  and anthologist in the field of science fiction and fantasy.  But they  didn't know as much about the romance they wanted to include in this anthology.  So Gardner  asked around and was referred to me since I'd written on both sides of  the romance/fantasy divide.

I suggested several authors who were  well-known for paranormal romance and some of the more romantic urban fantasy,  as well as a couple who were more romance, but did cross over to the dark side  now and then. After Gardner agreed to the  list, I contacted those authors on his behalf.

 Some were too busy,  some squealed and jumped in the air and said, "YESSSSS!"

(That would be me, says Jo! I love opportunities to play on the wild side.)

It's fun to be  a bearer of good tidings. <G> 

Gardner said I'd be welcome to  contribute, too.  I couldn't resist since I love doing fantasy short  stories.  My Guardian trilogy created families with powerful magical  abilities, and since then, I've done several shorter stories in that  world. 

One was "The White Rose of Scotland,"  a WWII novella in CHALICE OF ROSES.  I'd also written a modern Guardian  story about a young doctor in New York City, and he had a brother who was a  police detective.  I'd been itching to write about him.   Hence, "The Demon  Dancer," in SONGS OF LOVE AND DEATH in which my detective Dave deals with crimes that require more than  worldly powers, and who loves a woman separated from him by a conflict that  can never be resolved....

Ah yes, conflict.

Conflict (which I define as between the hero and heroine) and barriers (the external obstructions to their union) make a romance zing, and the "death" element certainly raises the stakes! In romance novels often the consequence of failure to form a couple is unhappiness or even misery, but rarely death. Or the death of many. In this anthology death is often the looming consequence, and in some stories, death wins.

In my story, The Marrying Maid, if Rob Loxsleigh doesn't find and win his destined bride, he will die, but so too will all his family. Not just his immediate family, but all the descendents of the original Robert Loxsleigh in the middle ages. Now that's a consequence!

So I ask, how do you regard powerful conflicts and barriers in romance, especially those that could lead to death if the protagonists don't triumph and come together in love? Do you perhaps think such drama can overwhelm the love story? Or does it add intensity to it? Any good examples come to mind?

If you're a writer, do you find it difficult to create truly challenging barriers for your protagonists? That's a surprisingly common problem. I think romance writers are just too kind by nature.

Why do we need those barriers anyway?

My opinion is that they prove the love -- in the old sense of "prove" which is "test." The reader doesn't have to take on faith that all is well at the end of the book; she's seen the hero and heroine struggle against odds, clash and find compromise, communicate in stressful situations, and work together to overcome whatever's thrown at them.

Do you agree?

Of course the "conflict" in a romance is a complex mix of internal and external. In my story, the external is the faery curse that hangs over the Loxsleighs. Then there's the relationship conflict -- Rob must marry Martha Darby, a clergyman's daughter, but she is appalled at the idea of marrying a fashionable, frivolous aristocrat. She's even more appalled to find herself drawn to him.

Here's a little snippet

St James’s Park, London, 1758

   It was as if a new song entered his world, or a new taste, or a new sense -- and yet, one instantly recognized.  Rob Loxsleigh turned to look around the park, striving to make the movement casual to his chattering companions, so noisy in their silks and lace, but already fading under the power of his new awareness.
   There.
   He smiled, with delight but with surprise.
   The woman in gray? The one strolling through the park at the side of another woman just as ordinary, wearing a plain gown with little trimming and a flat straw hat?
   She was his destined bride?
   He'd been told he'd know and for years he'd sought the unignorable. Sometimes, with a particularly pretty girl or fascinating woman, he'd tried to believe his desire meant that his quest was over. A kiss had quickly proved him wrong.
   Now, however, he knew. She alone seemed real in an unreal world and his body hummed with a symphony of need -- not just desire, but a hunger for everything she would bring.
   Now, within weeks of disaster, Titania had sent his marrying maid.

  (The picture is not of St. James's Park, but of nearby Green Park, but I think it gives an idea of the setting. And yes, there really were pelicans in St. James's Park, as referred to in the story.)

Martha is alarmed by the attentions of such a man. She turns her mother away from the pelicans toward  their inn.

(The picture of a pelican in St. James's Park is from this collection at Picasa.

I think it's delightful! And yes, they really were in the park in Georgian times.)

   "Come, Mother. We must hurry."
   "What? Why?"
   Martha came up with the only possible excuse. "I need to piss."
   "Oh dear, oh dear. Yes, very well." Her mother did walk faster and gradually Martha's panic simmered down. They were safe and she would not come here again.
   "Ladies."
   Martha froze, then would have walked on if her mother hadn't already turned, incapable of being cold or discourteous. Thus she must turn too, already knowing who had spoken. By logic, surely, not by a frisson on the back of her neck and a strange tension deep inside
   He stood mere feet away, his silk suit embroidered with silver thread as well as colors. The lace at throat and wrist would have cost a fortune, and his neck cloth was fixed by a gold pin that sparkled in the sun, as did rings on his fingers and the jeweled hilt of his sword.
    As did his eyes, as green as a summer leaf. His handsome, lean face was painted to give him fashionable pallor and then to restore color with rouge on cheeks and lips.
   He was ridiculous, but Martha was powerfully aware of being dressed in mourning grey with only a silver pin for ornamentation, and of never having let paint touch her face. She should have been disdainful, but instead the peculiar sensation within could almost be awe.
   He was smiling directly at her now and holding out a handkerchief. "I believe this is yours, ma'am?"
   Martha glared at the linen, ferociously irritated that the handkerchief was indeed her own, marked by the embroidered forget-me-nots in one corner. How had it come to fall out of her pocket?

Faerie, of course, so well known for meddling.(There's a longer excerpt here.)

Conflict, barriers, tension.... all good stuff, but a romance is not a mystery. You know the end -- Rob and Martha triumph and Faery is defeated. The fun is in the process. True?

What do you think about conflict, love and death? And pelicans?

Jo

 

 

 

 

 

Kathryn Johnson: Honorary Word Wench!

 by Mary Jo    

Kathryn, thanks so much for visiting and discussing The Gentleman Poet, your wonderful blend of history, fiction, and poetry!  You are now inducted into the prestigious ranks of Honorary Word Wenches, and given this gift: a virtual cottage in Bermuda:

This lovely, private cottage at Mazarine by the Sea is always available when you need peace and quiet and the sea to spin new tales, and since story creation takes place in the mind, retreat to a a virtual cottage doesn't require airline tickets or TSA or any of the complications of actual travel!

Enjoy your cottage, and thanks so much for visiting Word Wenches, Kathryn--

Mary Jo

 

Guests & Winners

Sherrie, here.  This coming week will be a busy one in Wenchlandia.  Those of us in the U.S. will be celebrating Thanksgiving, and the Wenches will be hosting two guests this week.

GUESTS:

On Wednesday, November 24, Honorary Word Wench Amanda McCabe returns as Nicola  Cornick's guest.  Amanda will be talking about the final book in her Irish series.

Then on Friday, November 26, Anne Gracie interviews Dr. Jennifer Kloester.  Jennifer has written her newly released Georgette Heyer's Regency World, "the definitive guide to the people, places and society in Georgette Heyer's Regency World."

WINNERS:

More winners!  Since our last announcement, two more individuals have won books:  Diane Bryant won a book from guest Kathryn Johnson.  Kathy Blush won a book from Pat, who used her blog topic suggestion.  Congratulations, winners!

Creating Reality

Pat here, pulling a question from Ye Old Wench Question Basket. Kathy Blush is the winner of a recent Patricia Rice book for asking: As an author, is it more satisfying/challenging to create a story that is based in your own "reality" (i.e., region where you live/grew up, current times, etc.) or one that is based completely outside your personal realm (i.e., fantasy, historical, etc.)?

Fun question and one requiring my thinking cap! I’ve written contemporary romance, historical romance, books that border on fantasy with magical and super humans, and I’m also playing with books that are pure urban fantasy with mythical creatures.

And I think the basic answer to your question is that each book contains some part of my own reality, but most of the books are the world inside my head—and I’m not certain that’s real or even sane!

Historicals, obviously, are based in true history. I can take a piece of the past that interests me and research and form a book around it. I can visit the area I’m writing about, use authentic characters, and do everything possible to ground my romance in the real world, but it’s still fiction. Every iota beyond those tidbits of history comes from me saying “What if…”  I love the research, but I love the freedom of letting creativity roam, too.

The closest I’ve ever come to writing “what I know” was the Carolina contemporaries (http://www.awriterswork.com/rice_patricia/rice_patricia.asp). I loved being able to write about contemporary people and problems and the beauty of the area I lived in. It was fun driving down the road and saying “that’s where that scene took place.” And research made a wonderful excuse to go to the beach! But in a way, those were probably the most challenging books I’ve written. They were modern fantasies about cartoon artists and archeologists and movie stars meeting everyday folk, but the contemporary world I grounded them in changes daily. The topics I wrote about then were old news by the time the books were published. Romance doesn’t change, but technology creates iPads and ebook readers and 3D televisions faster than I can write! I’ve been reading over books I wrote a decade ago, as I put them up in digital format (they’re available on Kindle and B&N now), and I’m amazed at how the world has changed since I wrote them. But people and love always remain steadfast, thank heavens!

I write romance for the fun and joy of falling in love over and over again. But in the contemporaries, I wanted to play with the realities of the times just as I do with the historicals. While it’s possible to write a book about people on the moon, readers need some connection to those people. We need a reality that we recognize, whether it’s the characters, their emotions or interactions, or the setting. So my contemporaries included people losing their jobs, getting divorced, falling in with the wrong crowd…  Anything that worked within the story. Those topics are close to the heart but no different than the problems people suffered two hundred years ago. It’s just easier to make people believe the fantasy of a lonely spinster marrying an earl than an ex-con marrying a wealthy cartoon artist!

So I think each type of story has its own level of reality—historicals are steeped in history, contemporaries in real people and settings, and urban fantasy probably in injustice and other social topics.  Each one offers a different opportunity to stretch creative wings.

Those of you who write, am I coming close to how you look at it? And for readers, how grounded in reality do you want your books? You don’t have to stick to romance. We read everything here!

 

And as a PS: my Magic series ebooks will be pulled from the stores by the first of January so they can be reissued in print and with new covers. It may be years before the whole set is available again, so if you're missing a volume, buy now! http://www.bookviewcafe.com/index.php/Patricia-Rice/Novels/   Those were books set against a historical period, and I even tried to make the "magic" scientific!

The Gentleman Poet: a Chat with Kathryn Johnson

by Mary Jo

Today Kathryn Johnson, author of over forty books in several genres, is stopping by for a chat.  I’ve known Kathryn for years through Washington Romance Writers and knew that she was a thoroughly versatile pro, but it was her most recent book, The Gentleman Poet, that brings her to the Word Wenches today.

I got an early read of The Gentleman Poet when Kathryn asked if I could look at the manuscript for a possible quote. Talk about getting lucky!  Her book isn't a romance, but it's romantic and has a fascinating blend of fact, fiction, and speculation.  The story is built around a real seventeenth century shipwreck in Bermuda—a wreck that might have been the inspiration for William Shakespeare’s The Tempest.  (Plus, she has recipes!)

The real and the fictional threads are woven together into such a complex tapestry that I can’t do it justice, so I’ll turn the pixels over to Kathryn. 

MJP: Welcome to the Word Wenches, Kathryn!  You said once that this was a book of your heart that you’d been wanting to write for a long time.  What inspired you?  Tell us about your research!  How did you blend fact and fiction?  What intriguing tidbits did you learn about the Bard?  And where did you find out how to cook a turtle when stranded on a desert island?  <G>

KJ:  Wow! Lots of great questions! Let’s start with “book of my heart.” The thing is, I was a history major in college, so you’d think I’d immediately gravitate toward writing historical fiction. Right!

My first manuscript completed was a novel set in Constantinople in the 12th century. It was heavily researched and I was totally into the period. I was sure it would sell. It didn’t. No agent, no editor wanted it. Now granted, maybe my writing wasn’t ready to be published. But it might have sold if publishers were hungry for realistic historical fiction at the time. They weren’t. Historical romances were selling well, but the romance in this was way too thin and the research way too heavy.

So I gave up on that idea and went on to write other things—contemporary romances, juvenile and young-adult novels. But I kept thinking about using history somehow. I did write two mystery novels for young readers with historical settings: Secret of the Red Flame (set in post Civil War Chicago) and The Star-Spangled Secret (during the War of 1812).

But I had to wait a while longer before readers’ tastes shifted to welcoming the type of historical I wanted to write—lots of juicy historical details, a touch of fantasy and suspense, and a touching love story.

When people ask what inspired me to write The Gentleman Poet, I say, “My husband.” In a way, it’s true, because the germ of the plot occurred to me on our honeymoon in Bermuda.

Ours was a later-in-life romance and so the expense of a wedding would be shouldered by us, not by parents. We just couldn’t afford a big wedding and reception, so we looked for ways to do it as inexpensively as possible while still making it special.

We found a cruise line that would plan a very private wedding for us (just 8 guests allowed) and include our honeymoon cruise to Bermuda. So we were married in the ship’s library (perfect for a writer) and the cruise line supplied a gorgeous cake, champagne, and a lot of little extras that made the trip special.

While we were in Bermuda we toured the Maritime Museum and learned about a legend that connected a real ship wreck off the Bermuda coast in 1609 with Shakespeare’s The Tempest. It was said that he read an account of the wreck and of the following 9 months when the survivors lived on the deserted island while they built a new ship to sail the rest of the way to Jamestown, Virginia.

What a cool story! I thought. So I got to work imagining, with the help of that account written by William Strachey, what it must have been like for them during those terrifying months so far from England.

You asked about research? Well, some people shy away from the labor of digging up facts and details, but I love, love, love it. It’s like playing detective. The more details I uncovered about the real journey of the Sea Venture and its passengers, the more material I had for my plot.

I returned to Bermuda and holed up in a guest house there to gather more information and start writing. The guest house is the Granaway, and it was built by an 18th century privateer. It’s a wonderful (and reasonably priced) place to stay overlooking the harbor across from Hamilton.

I stayed there for two weeks, soaking up the atmosphere. It was off-season, so it was chilly and rainy, just as it would have been for Elizabeth, my heroine, and the 149 others marooned there. I chose to blend fact and fiction, rather than write a historical novel so heavily embedded in fact that I had no freedom to fantasize.

The one big mental leap I asked my readers to make was to imagine the possibility that Shakespeare might have not simply read the account by Strachey; he might have actually been on the ship, eager for one last, great adventure as he moved toward the end of his life.

What tidbits did I learn about the Bard while writing this novel? Lots. Of course, I’ve never been a Shakespearean scholar by any stretch of the imagination, so as I read book after book about him written by people who have been studying him all of their lives, I was learning fresh material.

I was surprised to find as much information as there is about him. Yes, he’s still rather a mystery even to the scholars, but most agree that he was a real person who wrote the plays attributed to him (not a titled person writing under a pseudonym).

There are paper trails—court documents that prove he was in London or in Stratford-upon-Avon at certain times. He had a room in a house in London for several years and apparently went to bat for his landlord’s daughter and apprentice to facilitate their marriage, seemingly at the request of the mother. So this gave me a sense of his willingness to play matchmaker to young lovers.

He also was a good businessman, buying property as an investment and also investing in grain and other things as a hedge against, one can imagine, the economy or his theater being shut down. (As sometimes happened because of politics or an outbreak of plague.)

He was apparently a quiet man who kept to himself much of the time, and wasn’t into drinking and brawling as were other playwrights of the time. All of the little details I was able to dig up I used to create, in my own mind, a man who would be human, vivid, and interesting to the reader.

Turtle Soup! How did I learn how to make it? More research. I decided that since cooking for others changed my heroine’s life, I needed to find out what sorts of foods the English in 1609 might normally eat.

Having researched that through reading good nonfiction accounts of the times, I then found a colonial cookbook that was reprinted for tourists by the Williamsburg Foundation. The trouble with using these recipes (or receipts, as they called them) was that my heroine wouldn’t have had access to many of the ingredients.

Once the crew and passengers on the Sea Venture managed to get themselves to shore safely, they discovered that virtually all of their food supplies had been destroyed. They had no flour, sugar, salt, and very little of anything else including vegetables and meat. So she had to improvise and use whatever was at hand on the island.

The real problem was flour, because a great deal of their normal diet depended upon bread, or its use as a thickener. However, there were wild hogs, a wonderful assortment of fish and wild birds…and sea turtles. The turtles provided meat, eggs, and oil for cooking.

I found a turtle soup recipe in a replica of an early Bermudian cookbook and compared this recipe with the colonial recipe, and ended up using a little from each, adjusting the seasonings to what Elizabeth might have been able to find growing wild. And by the way, the recipes included in the book aren’t likely to produce dishes that would be appealing to our tastes today. In fact, I looked for those that were either humorous or strange sounding, thinking readers would find them that much more fun.

Well, I need to go off and work on a new novel, as well as catch up with my mentoring clients. I’m so proud of the new writers I work with. Such a talented crew they are. I sometimes think I learn as much from them as they learn from me!

Thank you, Word Wenches for inviting me to visit for a few moments. It’s been fun. Now, if I can just buy myself a little pleasure reading time, I’ll dig Mary Jo’s latest out from my to-be-read pile and follow one of her adventures!

Hugs, Kathryn

Kathryn Johnson will give a signed copy of The Gentleman Poet to one person who comments between now and midnight Thursday.  So feel free to ask about Shakespeare, The Tempest, Bermuda, and turtle soup!

Mary Jo

 

Ask A Wench: Would You Co-Author a Book?

For our November Ask A Wench post, we've chosen a question from Wendy MacNeil:

"If you could co-author a book with anyone, alive or not, would you -- and if so, who would it be?"

The Wenches respond:

Mary Jo Putney

Let me see--I think my coauthor would have to be the devil, since it will be a cold day in hell when I would coauthor a book with anyone! People who write plays tend to love the collaborative process. Novelists are more likely to be cranky introverts who are possessive of their work as wolverines. Of course there are some very successful collaborations, but they are very much a minority. I'm happy to brainstorm with my 'storming buddies, I welcome the astute comments of my critique partner, and I listen to the editors who buy my books, and often have good insights into improving the work. But ultimately, that book is mine, Mine, MINE! Ahem. Not that I have strong opinions on the topic or anything. *G*

Cara Elliott/Andrea Pickens:

Co-author a book? For me, that sort of destroys the whole joy of the creative process. Now, maybe I'm being selfish but it's MY story, and I want to give it my voice and my vision. There's so much else in life we compromise on, or decide by consensus, so I jealously guard the crafting of a book as something uniquely my own. Sure, there are lots of other authors I adore and admire. But I want to read their stories, not let them mess around with mine. LOL. That said, if you twisted my arm to pick one collaborator, it would be Jane Austen . . . simply so I could enjoy her sarcastic wit and barbed comments about the experience. I can't imagine her enjoying it any more than I would!

 

Patricia Rice:

M ark Twain. Even if the book never got done, I'd have the time of my life working on it!   

Jo Beverley:

If you could co-author with anyone, alive or not, would you, and if so, who > would it be? Like Mary Jo, I find it difficult to imagine working with another writer, though I do enjoy brainstorming and critique groups. An equal team, however.... Yikes! I suppose it's because as authors, we're goddesses, controlling our worlds. Hard to give that up. However, I could maybe collaborate on a short story. In that case, it would have been fascinating to work with Dorothy Dunnett, and I'd love to partner with Neil Gaiman because his storytelling mind is so very interesting.

 

Nicola Cornick:

Probably not! That would be for the sake of their sanity as well as mine, I hasten to add. I like to write, re-write, revise, move things around, think about them, scrap them and start all over again, so I would probably drive a co-author completely mad in short order. I have collaborated with other authors on linked books and I have enjoyed the experience a lot, and learned from it, but anything closer than that would probably be a disaster. That said, if I were to co-author with anyone I would choose Horatio Nelson. Not only would that mean I could get to know personally one of the most charismatic men of his era, and I think that would be fascinating, but I could also work with him on a new edition of his bestseller: "A Patent Bridge for Boarding Enemy Vessels." I hear the first edition was a bit dry. Perhaps I could inject some romance into a new version.

Joanna Bourne:

I want to collaborate with H.P. Lovecraft. I'd let him do the first draft. He'd come up with something like: The aperture was black with a darkness almost material. That tenebrousness was indeed a positive quality; for it obscured such parts of the inner walls as ought to have been revealed, and actually burst forth like smoke from its aeon-long imprisonment, visibly darkening the sun as it slunk away into the shrunken and gibbous sky on flapping membraneous wings.

I'd receive his e-mail and edit that down a bit. I'd send him back: The cave opening was black, a darkness that took form and escaped, flapping, into the open sky.

About the second week of our association he'd track me down and sling me over an altar and sacrifice my still-beating heart to Cthulhu.

Anne Gracie:

Mary Jo has pretty much answered this for me. I think I'd find it very difficult to write with someone else — and more to the point they'd probably find it very difficult writing with me.

My process is pretty idiosyncratic and messy. It usually takes me ages into the book to decide what it's really about, so I go back and rewrite the start several times. I also find it very hard to make decisions about where the book should go, and often decide on one thing, write it and decide it's wrong, so out goes that idea. This, I'm sure, would drive someone else batty.

Working in partnership, you need to be able to have a very similar vision for the story, and of the characters and their journey — and you'd need to have the same passion for it — because a passion to tell the story is what gets you through the "stuck" times. You'd need to plan the book out together, or at least plan a chapter or two ahead — and that's not me at all. And once you've decided on something, you'd need to stick to it for your partner's sake.

That said, I've several times thought of writing a book with someone else, because the whole idea of it interests me. But I think if ever I did something like that, it'd probably be a movie script, rather than a novel. Movies, by their very nature, are collaborative works, so I think my inner control freak would handle writing a script collaboratively better than a novel.

Susan King:

Writing is such a solitary creative process that I can’t imagine sharing the space on the page with another author. But if I did have the chance to time-hop and page-share, I’d be happy to edit Sir Walter Scott. Great plots, imaginative characters, a deep love and understanding of Scottish history… yet there are anachronisms, convoluted phrases and just way too many words per sentence. I’d clean all that up for him -- and I wouldn’t mind seeing my name in the acknowledgments for Ivanhoe or Lady of the Lake! (and I could also spend gobs of time in his study and library...) 

 

Wendy MacNeil, thanks for a fun question! You've won an autographed book, which I'll be happy to send to you - please contact me or our Wench Whipster, Sherrie Holmes, with your address.

What author, living or not, would YOU love to work with? Or would you take the course most of the Wenches chose, and decline the privilege?

  ~Susan

Queen. Refugee. Saint.

QUEEN HEREAFTER - coming soon!  

Crown/December 7, 2010

Guest Kathryn Johnson

Mary Jo will be hosting guest Kathryn Johnson on Wednesday, November 17.  Kathryn has published more than 40 novels and is the founder of Write by You, a professional mentoring service for fiction writers. She also teaches writing courses at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland.  Kathryn will be talking about her latest release, The Gentleman Poet (think Shakespeare, and The Tempest!)  You won't want to miss this interview!

Up, Up and Away!

Cara/Andrea here, Recently, some of the Wenches have been traveling to fabulously interesting places, rich with history and lore. (See Mary Jo’s wonderful pics from Wednesday!) I, alas, have been at home, madly scribbling to meet deadlines. So my journeys have been of the armchair variety. I’ve had to curl up with a good book and let my imagination take flight. Luckily, I started reading a wonderful book that really caught my fancy. It was on a subject that I don’t really know much about, but the title sounded intriguing: “The Age of Wonder—How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science.” So I picked it up . . . and off I went on a magical mental journey.

Letting the Mind Soar

The author, Richard Holmes, creates a vivid picture of a wondrous time—he paints captivating portraits of pioneer scientists and through fascinating—and often amusing—vignettes explains how their discoveries profoundly affected the world around them, influencing art, literature, music, politics, and religion. In other words he made science really come alive! Oh, if only high school biology had been this interesting!

By fortuitous coincidence, I saw that Holmes was giving a lecture near my home, so off I went to hear him. I’m delighted to report he spoke with the same passion and humor with which he writes. He ended his talk by saying his mission is to make people realize that science isn’t a dull, dry compilation of arcane formulas and boring tables. Like the arts, it’s about curiosity and creative genius, imagination and courage, faith and, yes, humor.

Imagination In Flight

Given the penchant for Wenchly travels of late, I thought I’d share some of the fun facts from the book’s section on early aeronautics, which I found particularly amusing. So take a deep breath, and off we go!

The Montgolfier brothers, Joseph and Etienne, were French paper manufacturers with an interest in chemistry. Inspired by watching his wife’s chemise inflate while drying by the hearth, Joseph conceive that his company could make flying machine out of very large paper bags filled them with hot air—or the new “inflammable air” (hydrogen.) He and his brother tested the idea by sending up a sheep, duck and a cockerel in a wicker basket attached to a beautifully decorated balloon. (They referred to it as “putting a cloud in a paper bag.”) When the animals came back down to earth unharmed, the space race was on!

  Their first manned flight—piloted the swaggering, skirt-chasing Jean-Francoise Pilatre de Rozier—was launched on November 21, 1783. It was colored a glorious sky blue and stood over 70 ft high. An open brazier burning straw provided the lift-off. He was joined by the Marquis d’Arlandes who provided a counterweight as well as muscle to stoke the fire. The 27-minute flight was apparently a comic ballet as the balloon floated over the rooftop of Paris, narrowly missing the church steeples and windmills as Pilatre kept warning the marquise to stop admiring the view and keep shoveling!

Taking Celebrity to New Heights

Across the Channel in England, the Royal Society was not happy that their Gallic confreres were stealing the show. (Partly because even back then, people were quick to realize the military implication of flight. Benjamin Franklin calculated that 5,000 balloons carrying two men “ . . . might in many places do an infinite deal of mischief before a regular force could be brought together to repel them.”) It was, however, an Italian who pioneered English ballooning. On September 15, 1784, Vincent Lunardi took off from London on the first manned ascent from British soil, observed by a cheering crowd that included the Prince of Wales. Drifting over the countryside, he enjoyed a meal of cold chicken and champagne while once in a while attempting to “row” his contraption with a pair of oars. (He was accompanied by his cat, who did not seem to appreciate the honor—Lunardi descended to set the animal back on terra firma and then resumed his flight.) A marketing genius, Lunardi had raised money for his exploits by exhibiting his red-and-white striped balloon at the Lyceum Theater before the launch, charging 2 shilling, sixpence for a visit.

He became an instant celebrity after the flight, selling his story to the Morning Post, and spawning a host of trinkets with his likeness—cups, snuffboxes and ladies’ garters were great favorites. Ever the showman, Lunardi then went on to invite the first female “aeronaut” to join him on a flight.

Ladies Aloft!

The actress Mrs. Sage played the starring role, along with a dashing Old Etonian named George Biggin. The gondola, a lavish affair draped in heavy silk, had some trouble getting airborne (Mrs. Sage later said she had lied about her weight and Lunardi was too much of a gentleman to press her.) In any case, there was much scrabbling about in the cockpit, leading to speculation on the ground of whether the Mile High Club was conceived on that first co-ed flight. After floating above the Thames for a while, the balloon fell to earth and was dragged through a field and into a hedge by the wind. Students from Harrow, which was close by,  rushed out to rescue Mrs. Sage, who had injured her foot, and carried her off to a nearby tavern where “everyone evidently got gloriously drunk.”) The event inspired the members of Brooks to start placing bets on who would be the first to have “an amorous encounter” in a balloon.

Wind and Water

The stories get even better as the race to be the first to cross the English Channel heated up. Both countries were rushing madly to prepare for a try, but the British balloon launched first. It was manned by an American, John Jeffries, and a Frenchman, Jean-Pierre Blanchard (an inventor in his own right who had experimented with different ways to steer flight, including oars, flapping wings and a primitive propeller.) The flight itself was a wild ride, and as the balloon began losing altitude, the two men stared throwing things overboard. Out went the brandy bottles—after they had drunk the brandy. Next went their clothes (Jeffries has started out wearing a very natty beaver flying hat and chamois gloves, an early exponent of ‘aviator cool.”) Once they had stripped down to their only their drawers, the balloon began to stabilize. Finally, after furiously emptying their bladders, they made it to a dry landing in France—a triumph of the human ingenuity and pluck!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this tiny glimpse into heady first days of “modern science!” As you can see, there was nothing stuffy about these experiments! I’ve not done the stories or Holmes’s writing style justice—but trust me, the sections are all wonderful. (Another wonderful anecdote involves Byron, Percy Shelly and Mary Shelley’s fascination with the new “voltage” machines, and whether electrical current could bring the dead back to life.)

  I wasn’t very interested in science when I was in school, but if I had had teachers as excited and inspired by the subject as Richard Holmes, I would have seen the subject in a whole new light. Suffice it to say, I learned so much from his book!

So how about you? Did you like science growing up? Does it interest you now? Do you have a favorite invention, or a memorable “first” that you’ve witnessed, like the shuttle flight or some such event?

Viva Venice!

by Mary Jo

Venice, Venezia, La Serenissima, the Queen of the Adriatic!  There’s a reason people rhapsodize about the city: Venice is as magical as it is improbable.  We got our first sight of La Serenissima when roaring across the lagoon in a water taxi.  Venice floated ahead of us in the morning mist like Brigadoon.  Way cool!

Venice is a city of church bells and stone tunnels, hidden courtyards and alleys that end abruptly at water’s edge.  It hints at deep, ancient secrets.  It’s also a modern city that’s a major cruise port, with ships large and small traveling through the lagoon to the open Adriatic. 

 
The city was settled around the fifth century when Romanized locals fled to islands in the lagoon to escape invading Germanic tribes.  Originally 117 islands, Venice was gradually built on millions of pine wood pilings driven deep into the clay and mud bottom of the lagoon.  Under water without oxygen, the pilings petrified and were covered with planking and stone that provide the foundation for buildings. 

Though now the city has only about 60,000 residents, its fame and romantic beauty draw tourists from around the world.  In its heyday, the Republic of Venice was one of the great Mediterranean trading powers with an empire that stretched from the Alps to the Levant.  In the 13th Century, Venice was the wealthiest city in Europe. 

Crusades were launched from Venice, and a couple of Venetians stole the body of St. Mark from Egypt because they wanted a high-powered patron saint for the city.  <g> Now the winged lion symbol of St. Mark is everywhere in Venice.

We’d flown into the Marco Polo airport, and the water taxi was the most convenient (and expensive) way to get ourselves and our luggage to the flat we’d rented for the three days before our cruise began.  We were dropped off at a coffee shop near the flat.  (The flat has a courtyard that opened directly onto a minor canal which was, alas, too narrow for water taxis.) 

Then we had to hump our bags along stone walkways and up and over a stepped bridge.  I love the bridges, and the way people trot briskly up and over them.  (The only place in the city where automotive type vehicles are found is at the end of the causeway from the mainland which allows trains and a few other vehicles to come over.) 

There were a lot of tourists pulling their wheeled suitcases and looking somewhat disoriented.  Plus, lots of dogs, mostly small and extremely well behaved.  The Mayhem Consultant was a little startled when dogs trotted into the coffee shop with their owners, but as I told him, this was Europe.  They do things differently here. <G>  Including eating breakfast—always some form of coffee and pastry—while standing at the counter.

Italian women wear scarves tied in complicated ways reminiscent of Regency dandies.  And—this is Italy!  Of course the food is good! <G>

It’s fascinating to see how thoroughly adapted the people and the city are to their watery matrix.  Instead of buses or subways, Venice had vaporettos (vaporetti) which scoot rapidly around the city and along the major canals. 

On the advice of a resident, we rode the #1 vaporetto, which travels up and down the Grand Canal so you can see all the amazing (and crumbling) palazzos built in the days when Venice was a major maritime power.  The #2 line took us to a more of the industrial side of the city.  The vaporettos are a great way to travel, and we never had to wait longer than ten minutes for one.

Boats fill all the transportation niches.  There were trash boats, boats that looked like pick up trucks, and even hearse boats carrying handsome coffins adorned with flowers as they made their way to San Michele, the cemetery island. 

The gondolas are mostly for tourists and very expensive, but a very similar boat called a traghetto carries people across the Grand Canal at several points.  Traditionally, passengers stand.  If you saw them sitting, you knew they were tourists. <G>

Even “acqua alta,” the high waters that cause regular flooding of parts of the city such as St. Mark’s Square are treated with equanimity.  People just put on their high Wellington style boots and out come the duck boards—in this case, solid tables that are stacked out of the way until needed.  Here’s a blog about one of the highest tides in several decades. 

I loved Venice and want to go back, but I’m no expert on the city.  For a better understanding, I asked Jaclyn Reding, a writer friend who is the owner of the flat where we stayed, Ca' Venexiana, what she loves about the city.  Jaclyn was actually in Venice on one of her regular visits to make sure that everything is kept in first class shape.  Her reply:

“I love...

The church bells ringing through my window (as they are right now),

The improbability of the city being built as it is on water, and surviving for as long as it has.

There are no cars, no noise, no traffic, no hustle and bustle.

It is slower, quieter, peaceful...so restorative for me.

It is its own little world.  You can walk without a map, you can wander at will without having to worry about getting hopelessly lost.  No matter where you wander, you will always...always still be in Venice.

I love that progress has not marked Venice.  The buildings have changed very little for centuries.  You can imagine Casanova, or Henry James, or even Marco Polo as they were, each of them, when they lived here.

I love that the gondola is still made by hand, even if it takes almost a year to make just one, and not mass produced in some Fiat gondola factory.

I love that the traditions carry on...in the regattas, the festivals, the way the city still marries itself to the sea every year in a ceremony that has gone on for centuries.

I love that the fish market is set up each day near Rialto, as it has been for more than 500 years.  That it hasn't been replaced by a dollar store, or a fast food place.

Last night, I went in to the little bakery around the corner.  The owner was there, who had made the tortas and breads himself, and I love that he took the time to explain to the woman in front of me every ingredient he used in his products, and that they had a friendly conversation with her about foods and families. 

I love that when I bought my own torta, the owner's daughter wrapped it in decorated paper, and tied it with a pink ribbon and even curled the end of the ribbon for me.  Who does that anymore?

I love that I can sit at my window, watching the gondolas and other boats glide by, and write and that if whoever is passing by my window somehow catches my eye, he will inevitably wave and wish me "buon giorno."

Just reading her comments makes me want to go back right now! 

If you have dreams or experiences of Venice, please share. 

Ciao for now!

Mary Jo

By the light of the moon

Anne here. I walked my dog late last night and the moon was coming up over the hill and I stood and watched it rise over the rooftops and emerge through the trees. When you're out in the night and a huge golden moon surges silently over the hill, it's magic.
 

No wonder people used to worship it. And fear it.
Dancing by the light of the moon — how many of us have done that? I don't mean in the Wiccan sense, ritualistically (though if you have, I'd love to hear about it), but just a slow dance with the beloved person, just the two of you and the moon and the distant strains of music. Or a joyous dance to fiddle music like the Owl and the Pussycat. Or a Van Morrison Moondance — still one of my favorite songs.

Like most people in western cultures I'm generally out of touch with the moon — I see it when walking the dog in the evening, or maybe when I'm driving home, but unless it's there right in front of me, looking spectacular, I often don't even notice it. It's lost behind buildings, or drowned out by bright city lights. Or hidden behind clouds, of course.

People in the past were more attuned to moons and weather and the length of the daylight hours. People on the land still are, I suspect, though not as strongly as they used to be. And some gardeners still plant according to the cycles of the moon. And fishermen are still ruled by the moon and the tides.

But it's times like last night that I think about what it must have been like in the distant past, when the day fades and the night closes in. Where I am, the days are getting longer, but in the northern hemisphere, and in the world of my book, the nights are closing in sooner, getting colder and darker and lasting longer.

In the past, darkness ruled. Until the introduction of first gas lamps and later, electricity, people only had frail barriers against the dark; a fire if you had enough fuel, a lamp or a candle or two. It's hard for modern people to imagine the sheer power of the closing in of the night. Fires, lamp oil and candles cost money. Mostly at night there was only the oblivious and unreliable light of the moon.

And the power of that both awed and frightened them. Bad things gathered under the light of the moon... and hid in the shadows. We forget that power, but it's still there.


Many years ago, when I was a new young teacher, I taught high school kids from a high rise housing commission estate — I don't know what the equivalent is in the US -- "the projects" perhaps? Anyway, very poor families. Most of the kids had been born on the estate.

In my first year at that school, we took the kids camping in a national park — five days in tents, sleeping on the ground, cooking on open fires, no modern amenities except for the shower and toilet block. And on the first night we took the kids on a night walk. 

Flashlight beams were darting everywhere, frightening the nocturnal animals (no bears or wolves or scary predators in Australia) so we teachers confiscated the flashlights, trying to teach the kids to walk quietly and just listen and watch by the light of the moon. 

But it was a cloudy night and the moon shone only for fleeting moments, throwing as much shadow as it gave light.

Now these were tough, inner city adolescents, but they were scared, really scared (though trying hard not to show it) and not just because of the strange environment. Brought up in a high rise estate they'd never seen the dark before — their night world was invariably lit by security lights and light pollution from the city. 

They thought "black as the night" was just an expression, and they were shocked that it really was black, so dark at times you could barely see your hand in front of your face.
Remember the Sopranos episode where Paulie and Christopher were lost in the woods? It was a bit like that. The kids clumped around the teachers — no fear of anyone wandering off. And it changed their view of the world.

We who live in cities, where the night is never really dark, where we can shut out the night and bright light comes at the flick of a switch, forget how important it was, sunset, moonrise, and the closing in of the night.

When I was a child and we moved to Scotland for a year, we arrived in winter. I was shocked that I went to school in the dark and came home in the dark. Dark at four o'clock in the afternoon? Unimaginable.
When you come to understand the tyranny of the night that used to exist, it's so much easier to understand the worship of the moon, and the wild pagan celebrations to mark the turning of the year, and the building of bonfires.

For me, the lengthening days mean later and later dog walks, and the opening up of life, embracing long, lazy days and warm summer nights. But in northern climes, you'll be hunkering down at night, building fires, and getting ready to cosy up. There's a domesticity about winter, an intimacy and hominess.

So, when do you see the moon? And what do you do like to do by moonlight?
Are you looking forward to winter or not? (Or summer if you're in the southern hemisphere?) What do you like about it? Hate about it? Or are you from the tropics, where seasons only come in wet or dry, and you envy others their snow and autumn leaves and spring blossoms. 

New Winners!

Sherrie, here.  Three new winners join our legion of previous winners.  Last month, Jo's blog entitled Fox Hunting  garnered a number of comments.  Jo chose three winners from those comments:  Daz, Emily, and Louisa Cornell. Congratulations, winners!  If you'll send your full name and mailing address to Jo or Sherrie we'll get those books to you.  And remember, folks, we have eight new bookmarks for you!  Just check out the Free Printable Bookmarks sidebar on the right.

Gunpowder, Treason and Plot

Nicola here! Actually I’m not here, I’m on holiday in Wales, out of internet range, so the other Wenches have generously offered to cover for me and take any comments and discussion on the blog today. I did however make a case of special pleading to write this blog because today is Guy Fawkes' Night in the UK, the night on which we celebrate with fireworks and bonfires the thwarting of a plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605. It’s a very special day in the UK!

The Plot

It was the intention of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators to kill King James I and his eldest son and heir, Prince Henry, plus all the nobility sitting in the House of Lords and all the members of parliament sitting in the House of Commons. They wanted to put a Catholic monarch on the throne. The plot was thwarted when Henry Parker, 4^th Lord Monteagle, received an anonymous letter warning him not to attend parliament:

“My lord out of the love i beare to some of youere frends i have a caer of youer preseruacion therfor i would advyse yowe as yowe tender youer lyf to devys some excuse to shift of youer attendance at this parleament for god and man hath concurred to punishe the wickednes of this tyme… for thowghe theare be no appearance of anni stir yet i saye they shall receyve a terrible blowe this parleament and yet they shall not seie who hurts them…”

Monteagle was married to the sister of one of the Gunpowder Plotters, Thomas Tresham, so although the author of the letter was never identified it’s tempting to think Tresham was warning his family. Monteagle took the letter to Robert Cecil, who informed the King. The king ordered a search of the cellars at the Palace of Westminster. The plot was discovered and Monteagle became the hero who saved Parliament. He was rewarded to the sum of £700 a year - £500 in cash and £200 in the value of land donated to him. He invested the money in business ventures in Virginia.

The Figurehead

One of the lesser-known aspects of the Gunpowder Plot is what the plotters intended to happen if they had actually succeeded. Their aim was to put James I’s daughter Elizabeth on the throne as a Catholic figurehead. In 1605 the nine-year-old Elizabeth was living at Coombe Abbey in Warwickshire.  Lord and Lady Harington, staunch Protestants, had been charged with "the keeping and education" of the young Princess, as was the wont with royal children in those days. At Coombe, Elizabeth was taught amongst other things, French and Italian, music and dancing. King James did not approve of the education of women, stating that: "to make women learned and foxes tame had the same effect - to make them more cunning." However I think we may assume that by most people's standards Elizabeth was very well educated.

In late October 1605 strange rumours of a plot to overthrow the monarchy were circulating in Warwickshire, which was a stronghold of Catholicism. Lord Harington was warned of a threat to the princess and Elizabeth was taken for her own safety to the city of Coventry, for it was suspected that she might be seized should a rebellion take place. She was lodged in the city with an armed guard. Later, after the gunpowder plotters had been arrested and tortured, it emerged that it had been their intention to kidnap "the person of the Lady Elizabeth, the king's daughter, in Warwickshire, and presently proclaim her queen." The plan had been to seize her from Coombe Abbey and carry her off to Ashby St Legers, a Catholic safe house and the home of Lady Catesby, mother of one of the conspirators.

It is said that when Elizabeth heard of the plot she declared that she would rather have died with her father and brother than become queen under such circumstances. What the plotters had intended to do with her brother Prince (later king) Charles is not clear. He would not have been in the parliament nor was there apparently any plan to seize him. Perhaps they simply had not thought that part of the plot through.

 The Conspirators

The Catholic gentry who hatched the gunpowder plot were known as "the gentlemen of the sword." Robert Catesby, the ringleader, was considered very personable, a man of action and talented swordsman, but headstrong and sadly lacking in judgement. He was a man "afire" for the Catholic cause and constantly chose to wear red clothes to symbolise this.

Catesby drew his friend Thomas Percy into the plot, along with the Wright brothers, Christopher and John, who were notoriously "ready to draw sword at any opportunity." Catesby's cousins Thomas and Robert Winter were less eager to become involved in the plot, mainly because Thomas Winter had been a soldier and was accustomed to calculating risk. Blowing up the Houses of Parliament, Winter thought, would never succeed. As it turned out, he was right. The Winters, the Wrights, Catesby and Thomas Tresham were all related by marriage. Guy Fawkes was the outsider, a soldier and siege master who was experienced with explosives.

The Houses

As part of a "Guy Fawkes Tour" last year I visited as many of the gunpowder plotters' houses as I could, to see the places where the conspiracy was hatched. Here is a selection of the houses. Some are open to the public, some privately owned.

Coombe Abbey, the childhood home of Princess Elizabeth, was my first port of call. It's now a luxury hotel and we were fortunate enough to be given the rooms that were originally Elizabeth's in the 17th century. Here I am at her bedroom window!

This is Coughton Court. In 1605 it was occupied by the family of Sir Everard Digby, who was the man deputed to abduct the Princess Elizabeth from Coombe Abbey. It was in the drawing-room of the Coughton Gatehouse that the news was broken to Lady Digby and other Catholic supporters that the plot had failed and the conspirators, including her husband, were on the run. The gatehouse still stands as it was in the seventeenth century and you can enter the drawing-room where Thomas Bates, Catesby's servant, broke the bad news.

Ashby St Ledgers was the principal residence of the Catesby family. It was at Ashby that the conspirators met to discuss the details of the Gunpowder Plot. They assembled in a room above the gatehouse that was private from the main house and also commanded a view of the surrounding area so that they were safe from the danger of sudden attack. Ashby St. Ledgers was also the place where Catesby amassed the armaments and gunpowder for use in the plot. The Gunpowder Plot Society relates that the "Gunpowder Plot Room" in the gatehouse "has its original panelling, and its atmosphere is such that it doesn't take much imagination to picture the plotters, sitting around, amid flickering candles, making their plans in here." I haven't managed to visit Ashby yet.

One property far removed geographically from the focus of the Gunpowder Plot and yet devastatingly affected by the involvement of its wonder is Lyveden New Bield in Northamptonshire. Lyveden belonged to the Tresham family.  Sir Francis Tresham died in the Tower of London for his part in the Gunpowder Plot. The heavy recusant taxes paid by the family coupled with the disaster of Sir Francis's death meant that the Treshams were ruined and the house at Lyveden never completed. Today it stands as a 400 year old ruin to the memory of a plot that was foiled and the complicated tangle of family relationships and catholic loyalties that were destroyed as a result. It one of the most haunting places I have ever seen. Here is a picture of Lyveden and the free range chickens that we met there.

In the UK different places celebrate Bonfire Night in different ways, such as the famous spectacle of rolling the flaming tar barrels down the streets of Ottery St Mary in Devon and the torchlit processions in Lewes. Do you have a favourite local or national celebration, with or without fireworks? 

On the move

Hi, here's Jo, with a picture that seems an auspicious welcome to our new home.

Here, there, everywhere!

We all talk about being busy, but I really have been. Early in October I went to France for a Dorothy Dunnett gathering, which was delightful. I got home in time to prepare to move from Yorkshire to Devon. We'd hardly settled, and certainly not opened all the boxes, before I set off to Rome to play with Mary Jo and attend a writer/reader conference there. It was delightful, too, but now I can try to settle back to ordinary life, pick up the MIP, refresh my web page and generally get caught up with everything.

Including picking the winners from my last blog. I haven't forgotten!

First Paris, and Dorothy Dunnett.

To save space I'll just say, if you haven't tried her historical novels, do so. (Click on the link above for more.) You may not like them, but if you do, they're a feast. Her 15th and 16th century books travel a lot, so they naturally lead to exploratory visits to very interesting places.

You can enjoy some picture journeys to a few here. There's one coming up next year to Istanbul.

 Pictures of Paris.

No one's put up Paris pictures yet, so here are a few, but mostly not your usual Paris pics!

Sainte Barbe. These students were bewildered to find a group of tourists staring reverently at the uninspiring modern College de Ste Barbe. But the original, founded 1460, was where Lymond, Dunnett's great hero, went for his education in France. And in one of the novels, he climbs the walls as he had as a student. Of course we gathered!

The Seine. For a more conventional offering, one early start caught magical light on the Seine near our apartment.

Jeu de Paume Back to the unusual, but not so much, this is the jeu de paumme court in Fontainebleau. A game of jeu de paumme between King Henri II and one of the fictional characters plays a significant part in book 2 of the Lymond Chronicles, Queens' Play.

I'll blog more about this later, but it was fascinating to watch a demonstration of this ancient forerunner of tennis. The original game was played in the streets, bouncing the ball off walls, which is why it's enclosed, and even incorporates a sloping bit at the left to represent the roofs of stalls.

Chantilly.

In the books, Lymond never visited the Chateau de Chantilly (yes, of the cream fame) but it's definitely in the period, and we had a wonderful private tour and a delicious dinner. As we all left happily at a late hour, I took this picture of part of the chateau reflected in water.

Rome

Rome was mainly to meet fans there. Both Mary Jo and I have many books translated into Italian and published by Mondadori, and we did indeed meet a bunch of very happy readers, which is always delightful.

Back to the Convent! We also got to stay in a hotel -- the Domus Sessoriana -- which was once a convent. I attended convent boarding school, and the high, echoing corridors brought back memories.

My school was Layton Hill Convent, now St. Mary's College in Blackpool, and on the website here I found a picture of me! I'm in the back row next to the nun.

The pic of the Blessed Sacrament dormitory is from the '40s, but it was still the same when I slept in it in the '60s. In the senior years we had rooms.

Roman Ruins. I reckon everyone's seen pictures of Roman ruins, but this one caught our eye as we walked along a very ordinary street near the convent. The grass and other weeds indicated it had been in this state for quite a while, but inside one could see magnificent details and painted ceilings. The next picture shows a door.

Rome really is so full of historic buildings that perhaps this is just another one and no one can be bothered with it, but it was rather boggling to see.

 

The end of the journey.

A wandering blog to go with my wandering life. And now I'm curious as to what you find most interesting or suitable for comment here.

At home for a while, thank heavens,

Jo