Word Wenches

Weddings!

Hi, this is Jo, going with the flow today. Everyone's talking about weddings, so I thought I'd do a brief skip through the history of weddings as they might be portrayed in romance novels set in England.

BTW, I do find this Victorian image very odd, not to say creepy!

Research into marriage and marriage law seems to me to be the cornerstone of historical romance, so I've done quite a bit, but I'm always looking for correction, clarification, or additional data. Please do contribute.

The Middle Ages

 For much of the middle ages a marriage took place on the church steps, but not inside it.

There were two reasons for this.

One -- this was a time with few paper records, and none that could be sure to survive, so all important events were secured by witnesses. The more important the event, the more witnesses. Wedding vows were taken before witnesses, and the more the merrier. Do it in a central place. In villages and towns, a church would be one of the bigger buildings and also central.

A wedding ceremony was not, however, seen as a religious one. It was a civil contracts, and in the case of noble marriages, a complicated legal agreement. As religious thinking turned against both women and sex (leading to the cult of the Virgin Mary) marriage itself was seen as unspiritual, so some clerics would have nothing to do with it at all. Most, however, would bless a union, but definitely not in the church.

Hence, the church steps.

Things moved along gradually. In time, the couple would say their vows on the steps in view of all, then go into the church for a more complicated blessing, perhaps even a mass.

As my next writing period is Georgian, we'll skip right along.

Georgian Times.

When England became Protestant, Catholic ceremonies became difficult, so I'm talking here about the mainstream Protestant ones.

The important date here is 1753-4, when the Hardwicke Act brought some order to the chaos of marriage to that date. Perhaps I'll do a whole blog on it sometimes, but here's the brief synopsis.

Before the Hardwick Act, the rules for marriage in England were the same as they were after the Act in Scotland. Think Gretna Green. All that was required was an avowal of being married before witnesses. No religious ceremony was necessary. (You can see how that fits with ancient tradition.) After the Act, there had to be banns or a licence, and the wedding had to take place in a church in the morning. There were other rules and too many wrinkles to go into, but that was the big change that made Gretna Green suddenly important.

Why Gretna Green?

I thought the Days Inn is a good reminder that Gretna resonates even to modern times!

Simply because it's the first place across the border by the closest route from the south. Anywhere in Scotland would do, plus some other places. The Channel Islands and the Isle of Wight, I believe. Perhaps the Isle of Man. Places that weren't entirely ruled by Parliament in Westminster.

From the above link site. "One of the most celebrated elopements to Gretna was that of the Earl of Westmorland and Miss Child, the daughter of the great London banker. The earl had asked for the hand of Sarah, and had been refused, the banker remarking, "Your blood is good enough, but my money is better," so the two young people made it up to elope and get married at Gretna Green. The earl made arrangements beforehand at the different stages where they had to change horses, but the banker, finding that his daughter had gone, pursued them in hot haste. All went well with the runaway couple until they arrived at Shap, in Westmorland, where they became aware they were being pursued. Here the earl hired all the available horses, so as to delay the irate banker's progress. The banker's "money was good," however, and the runaways were overtaken between Penrith and Carlisle. Hero the earl's "blood was good," for, taking deliberate aim at the little star of white on the forehead of the banker's leading horse, he fired successfully, and so delayed the pursuit that the fugitives arrived at Gretna first; and when the bride's father drove up, purple with rage and almost choking from sheer exasperation, he found them safely locked in what was called the bridal chamber! The affair created a great sensation in London, where the parties were well known, heavy bets being made as to which party would win the race. At the close of the market it stood at two to one on the earl and the girl."

Civil Marriage.

In 1836 it became possible to marry in places other than a church, and to be married by the local registrar. Hence, in England such a marriage takes place at the Registry Office. Note that in the UK, Justices of the Peace, or Magistrates, do not have, and never have had, the power to marry anyone.

The ceremony from the Book of Common Prayer is here.

The early church's distaste for matrimony was because it's all about sex, and it's still reflected in these words. "and therefore is not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men's carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God; duly considering the causes for which Matrimony was ordained."

First, It was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of his holy Name.

Secondly, It was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ's body.

Definitely a frown and a sigh there! Perahps it's not surprising that in Regency times those who could afford a licence preferred it to banns. They seemed to have thought it unpleasant to have their intention to wed and do all that procreation stuff read out in church each Sunday in front of the "lower orders."  

Wedding Dresses 

As we know, the white and veil is a modern development, and through most of history brides have dresses in what finery they could for the moment, generally in line with the fashion of the time. In Georgian times most brides would wear a special dress that could be worn later. Most weddings were quiet affairs in the local church, and it was tradition that the bride appear on the next Sunday in her wedding dress. After that, most would keep it for special occasions.

Here's a snippet of a country wedding from The Rogue's Return. They've previously married in Canada, but it was a bit irregular, so they decide to do it again to be sure. Not to mention a little peculiarity of the name.

Villagers lined the winding street to wish Mr. Simon and his lady well.

Near the church, they stopped at the Bride's Well. Jancy gave Simon a look, but he dipped some water for her with a silver dipper and she drank as a virtuous bride was supposed to. When she didn't drop dead, everyone applauded, and they could enter the church.

This time they had a license and every detail was precise. Simon slid a new golden ring onto her finger, and then a diamond hoop above it, to guard it, as the tradition went. Jancy had the other one on a chain around her neck, however, for it would always have special meaning for her.

They left the church to ringing bells, to be showered with grain and good wishes, and walked back to Brideswell tossing coins and trinkets.

What fictional wedding is most memorable for you? I'll give a copy of The Rogue's Return to a randomly chosen answer that quotes a few words or sentences from the scene.

Cheers,

Jo

 

 

Wench Susan's New Venture

Pat here, proudly announcing:

Susan King's first historical romance, The Black Thorne's Rose, originally published by Topaz/Penguin--is finally available in e-book form in an "author's cut" -- to be followed soon by The Raven's Wish, Angel Knight and several of Susan's earlier historicals.

First, to whet your whistle, here’s the official blurb:

  The Black Thorne's Rose
A high-born lady...a mysterious forest outlaw ... a daring deception

With her castle and lands forfeit, gently bred Lady Emlyn refuses marriage to a cruel lord and flees into the greenwood--where she falls for a bold forest outlaw, the Black Thorne, who courts danger in King John’s England. Caught in a game of passion and daring deception, Emlyn learns too late that the mysterious outlaw and the ruthless lord she despises are one and the same man. Now, for Thorne and Emlyn both, the greatest risk of all exists in the truth…and love.

“Excellent…filled with mythical legends, mystery and mayhem… an extremely powerful story.” -- Rendezvous

"Magnificent!" -- Virginia Henley


Now, here’s Susan!      

Pat: Your debut historical romance, The Black Thorne's Rose is now finally available! Tell us something about the book. Why did you choose to begin your career with a medieval romance?

Susan: A lifelong love of forest outlaws and Robin Hood tales, and bookshelves (and a brain) filled with medieval research sources -- what better reasons to write a medieval romance? Seriously, at the time I didn't realize that writing historical fiction was about to become a career for me. I was on an academic track, and took leave from that because I had three sweet little guys at home who needed a full-time mom for a while. And writing fiction was my guilty pleasure then. It was something I loved doing in my little bits of free time. So I was curious to see if I could really write good fiction and actually finish a novel, maybe even see a book published before I resumed the PhD work and teaching.

I had been playing with this particular story idea while working on my dissertation (medieval manuscript illumination and a study of iconography). During my leave, I wrote the story of Lady Emlyn, an English medieval lady (and manuscript illuminator in her spare time!), who loses her family castle to one of King John's barons. Fleeing  an arranged marriage, she meets a forest outlaw who has hidden ties to the man she has refused to marry. Emlyn and her outlaw are soon caught up in danger and vengeance, while love develops unexpectedly between them--though not unexpected to the reader!

In Black Thorne's Rose, I wrote the sort of story that I wanted to read myself -- an adventure-romance, a Robin Hood sort of tale, with a passionate and layered romance developing between the heroine and her mysterious hero -- and a lot of old-fashioned adventure too. The excitement and danger of hiding in the forest, practicing archery, escaping the baddies, jumping off cliffs, risky rescues, mixed with legend and mystery, and even touches of humor (well, I laughed, but hey, I wrote it!). And there's a certain last-minute escape at the end that may still be unique in romance!

Pat: Did you find that the story held up after several years? You've obviously changed and grown as a writer--what was it like to go back to that very first book and bring it out again?  And what exactly is an “author’s cut”?  

Susan: Reading it again myself, years later, I found that I still loved this story, still had that sense of excitement and anticipation and great fun that I had felt while writing it. So bringing this book back--which received fabulous reviews when it first came out, and for which I'm still grateful!--has been a wonderful experience for me. I look forward to going through my other early romances to get those ready for ebook publication.

Though this ebook version is not quite the same book that was published years ago. This is a new version--the "author's cut," I call it -- meaning that the author has cut, trimmed, edited and vastly improved the book! When I sat down to read BTR again a few months ago, it was no longer as a newbie writer, but as an experienced author. Here was my chance to improve on a book I still truly loved. Some of that extraneous language had to go. Out came the red pencil and the "delete" button... I got rid of the "'tis twas, 'twere" contractions sprinkled liberally throughout; cut extra description (how many times do we need to describe the hero's gorgeousness?); and a lot of exclamation points bit the dust. I trimmed language -- but the story, the events, the characters, all remained. I'm happy to say that The Black Thorne's Rose is fresh, lean and trim in its new incarnation, and still a fun story. 

Pat: Why did you decide to e-publish your earlier books, and what has that experience been like?

Susan: I've been planning to get my Susan King historical romances out in ebook form for a while now, and finally all the aspects came together -- the time to review and edit, and the right company with the expertise to prepare and handle the ebooks. Not to mention my own understanding of the whole complicated process - trying to grasp what needed to be done and the best alternatives to choose. The learning curve on getting these books out in this form is very big, and I've been fortunate to have the advice and expertise of some wonderfully talented and knowledgeable people. My ebook publisher is ePublishingWorks!, a company run by Nina Paules, one of our own Word Wenches readers.  Nina is doing a beautiful job with all aspects of the e-pub process, and with the help of her company, I'm very excited to get these early books out there and into reader's hands again!

Black Thorne's Rose is now available for Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble Nook, Kobo, iBook, and several other venues, with more options appearing all the time. And I'm happy to announce that my second historical romance, The Raven's Wish, will be available very soon. Raven's Wish was my first Scottish-set historical. Here's a sneak preview of the cover!


Susan has a new Facebook author page - click here to see Susan's page, and be sure to "like" it!  

 

How many of you are eager to see the return of medievals? Raise your hand! Have any of you been straying from historical romance lately? Do you have any idea why?

 

Update! Nina has offered to give three Amazon gift versions of BLACK THORNE'S ROSE to random commenters. These versions can be read on your computer as well as other devices. I'll call the cut-off time as midnight Thursday, April 28th. Drop a line and say hi and you may be a winner!

Flygirl: An Interview with YA Author Sherri L. Smith

by Mary Jo

(Starting with a brief personal note: my third Lost Lords book, Nowhere Near Respectable,is being released tomorrow, April 26th.  More about the book in a couple of weeks.)

But the big news is that today, much honored young adult writer Sherri L. Smith is visiting the Word Wenches.  Though I’m a neophyte young adult writer, I’ve been reading YAs for years, and one of the best, the very best, that I’ve read is Sherri’s  Flygirl. 

In Flygirl, young Ida Mae Jones is a gifted pilot, though she hasn’t a license since a white flight instructor won’t pass a colored girl in 1940 Louisiana no matter how well she can fly. 

Then WWII begins.  Ida Mae’s older brother leaves medical school and goes off to war, and there is a desperate need for pilots—so much so that the army creates a group called the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots to ferry aircraft and free male pilots for combat.

 Ida Mae has the skills and the passion for flying as well as a fierce desire to do anything she can to help the war effort and bring her brother home safely.  She is also light-skinned enough to pass for white.

So Ida Mae joins the WASP and serves her country—but at what price to her identity and soul? 

Flygirl is a novel that works on all levels: it’s beautifully written, thoroughly entertaining, it takes me to new worlds, and deals with serious issues in a thoughtful and moving way.  And I’m not the only one to feel that way: Flygirl has won masses of awards and recognition, including listings as one of the best YA novels of 2010 from the American Library Association, the Washington Post, the Chicago Public Library, and more.  I’m honored to welcome Sherri L. Smith to the Word Wenches today. 

 

 Getting Started:

MJP: Sherri, could you describe your writer’s journey?  Did you always know that you wanted to be a writer?  Why did you choose YA?

SLS:  I’ve written since I was in grade school—it seemed like a natural progression from being an avid reader to trying my hand at writing.  That said, it took me years to actually pursue writing professionally.  I skirted around it, fumbling my way through short stories and half-baked novel chunks into my twenties. 

Then, some time in the late 90s, a friend gave me The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron and reading it made me realize I wanted to write novels.  A trip to the library brought home my love for the books I read as a kid and a teen.  I have a deep fondness for the books that got me through elementary and high school, so the choice was almost made for me.

MJP: You’ve worked in the movie industry.  Did that contribute to your writer’s toolbox?

SLS:   Absolutely.  I went to college for Film and Broadcast Journalism, and took some creative writing classes along the way, so I have a grasp of several different writing forms.  My work is very filmic, in that I rely on a three-act structure and visual imagery. 

When I hit the working world, I did a stint at Disney in TV Animation.  My job was to come up with stories, so I learned a lot about structure and story arcs.  That was invaluable.  It also taught me to outline stories start to finish—an incredibly helpful tip for anyone who has a thousand half-written pieces lying around.  Learning to map out my ideas helped me reach the finish line.

Why WASP?

MJP:  It’s an embarrassing cliché to ask where a writer gets her ideas, but nonetheless <g>…what was your inspiration for writing about the WASP?

SLS:  It’s not embarrassing, because every book comes from somewhere different.  I guess if we all had a magic frog that fed us ideas, then it would be a cliché:  My idea frog, of course.  Flygirl came about after hearing a Radio Diaries piece on the WASP on my local NPR station.  It was a gripping 20-some-odd minutes of audio that drew me in completely.  Then the idea frog in my brain hopped around and stirred up some other thoughts that came together to create Ida Mae Jones and the rest of the book.

MJP:  My YA series also involves WWII, and it’s a fascinating period.  How did you research the wonderfully convincing details and atmosphere?

SLS:  Oh, so much research!  I’m sure you know what I mean.  I listened to audio tapes on the Library of Congress website, man on the street interviews taken after the day Pearl Harbor was bombed.  It gave me such a sense of how the world felt at the time. 

I talked to my mom and other people who grew up during that period.  I watched movies , and read books set in the time period, nonfiction and fiction alike.  Documentary films, reference books.  There’s a great series of research books from Writer’s Digest called  The Writer’s Guide to Everyday Life that covers all these different time periods. 

I used a Prohibition through World War II book by Marc McCutcheon.  It lists everything from slang to clothing styles, popular music and news of the day, celebrities, and just about any little item you can think of.  That really helped to get the details right.  I wish there were more of those books!

MJP: World War II changed society as a whole and the lives of the people who lived through it.  Ida Mae is no exception.  What do you think her future holds?  And do you think there’s hope for that hint of romance in the story?

 SLS:  It’s an interesting question.  While the war opened up so many doors for women, a lot of those doors slammed shut again the minute the war was over.  Ida would not be allowed to be a pilot again, regardless of her race, unless she wanted to move to Alaska and try her hand as a bush pilot (which some WASP did do after the war).  At best, she could hope to be a stewardess when the commercial airlines got up and running. 

But she’s a determined woman, so I’m pretty sure she’d find a way to keep flying.  The war didn’t stop her, after all.  So nothing else will either. 

As far as the romance with Walt… again, the world was against it.  If Walt accepted her for who she was, there were a handful of states that would allow it, although anti-miscegenation laws weren’t repealed nationally until 1967.  And even if the law allowed it, that didn’t mean it was accepted by society at large.  I guess it all comes down to what kind of man Walt is.  Hmm. 

It makes me nervous, like I’m waiting for his response, too.  As long as we’re waiting for the mail, there’s hope.  And as long as it’s Ida Mae, I feel positive she’ll have a great life.

MJP:  I’m sure she will, too, and I have hopes for Walt. <G>  Could you give us an idea of what you’re working on now?

SLS:  I’m working on several projects right now.  The main one is Orleans, a speculative novel set in a near future in which the Delta coast is quarantined from the rest of the country after a series of man-made and natural disasters.  The surviving population in New Orleans has gone tribal, and the story follows a teenaged girl trying to save the life of a newborn baby. 

I’m very excited about this book—it’s my first speculative piece, and I’m passionate about New Orleans, which was my mom’s home town.  Aside from Orleans, I’ve been exploring writing mysteries (!), and starting the groundwork for what I hope will be a graphic novel, to boot. 

On top of the writing, I’m also heavily involved with Hedgebrook, a wonderful writers retreat for women up in Washington State.  Hedgebrook hosts writers in six cottages on a gorgeous organic farm—they feed you, body and soul, and in exchange, you write!  Was there ever a better bargain struck? 

I’m part of the Alumnae Leadership Council here in Los Angeles, and we’re sponsoring some terrific creative development workshops in April, as well as a some fundraisers throughout the year to raise awareness and support for this fantastic nonprofit group.  If anyone’s interested in learning more (seriously, if you are a woman and a writer, there’s nothing better), you can check it out at www.hedgebrook.org. 

MJP:  Obviously, you are living a live as full and rich as Ida Mae’s!  Thanks so much for visiting, Sherri.

Sherri has graciously agreed to send a copy of Flygirl to someone who leaves a comment on the blog between now and Tuesday midnight. 

As for you all—had you ever heard of the WASP?  Did you know of them and have dreams of flying with such brave women like Ida Mae?  (The British had a similar outfit.)  And what are your thoughts on how World War II changed our world?

The photo above shows President Barack Obama signing into law a long overdue Congressional Gold Medal to the WASP, and all the brave women who served in it.

Mary Jo

 

 

 

(1) Guest Sherri L. Smith; (2) Winners

SHERRI L. SMITH

 Monday, April 25, Mary Jo Putney will be the host for guest Sherri L. Smith.  Sherri's Young Adult book, Flygirl, has won all kinds of awards, including the American Library Association's 2010 Best Book for Young Adults.  The heroine of Flygirl is Ida Mae, a young black woman who joins the Women Airforce Service Pilot (WASP) during WWII.

 

WINNERS

We have a new batch of winners!  Mary Kennedy won a book from Mary Jo Putney, who used her blog topic suggestion for Ask-a-Wench.  Anne Hoile won a book from Jo Beverley.  Mary Anne Landers won a book from Joanna Bourne.  And Clancy Metzger won a book from guest Mia Marlowe.  Congratulations, winners!

War & Peace in Medieval Scotland

Cara/Andrea here,

Today, I'm welcoming my good friend and HWW Michelle Willingham back to the Wenches to talk about her new foray into history. Michelle's Medieval Irish heroes have captured the heats of romance readers and won critical acclaim, including a RITA nomination for Taming Her Irish Warrior in 2010. However, in her new series, which debuts in North America next month with Claimed By A Highland Warrior, she journeys into new territory, heading north and east to Scotland! The new setting naturally involved lots of new research and travel, and Michelle is here to share some of what she learned. So, without further ado, I shall pass the pen to her!

The Scottish Wars of Independence have been romanticized over the years, both with the stories of William Wallace (depicted in the movie "Braveheart") and the idea of the Scots fighting for their freedom from English rule.  I'll admit that I was drawn to the time period because of the raw, Highland warriors. 

Upon researching the wars, I discovered that English garrisons were set up all over Scotland to help Edward I gain an advantage.  The king laid siege to many castles, seeking to dominate and destroy Scottish rebels.  He used newer technology, such as a trebuchet he nicknamed "War Wolf" when they hurled large boulders at Stirling Castle in 1304.  Sulphur and saltpeter, the elements of gunpowder, were combined to help bring down the walls.

This past summer, my husband and I went on a research trip to Scotland. One of the things I learned about the UK is that their roads are NOT the same as U.S. highways. A location that's 100 miles away could very easily take four hours to reach. But despite our GPS (which mistakenly believed we were driving through a cow pasture), it was fun to brave the one-lane roads, taking our lives into our hands as we passed the tractors. I spent hours in the Edinburgh museum, photographing what artifacts I could and asking the guides questions about medieval weapons and clothing. Interestingly enough, the few surviving medieval artifacts were crosiers and other religious items.  There were almost no everyday pieces on display.  Perhaps the Highlanders valued their clan and the people more than "things," or perhaps they were primarily made of wood and didn't survive.

A few times, we took the "scenic" route, where the streets had no name and the sheep wandered into the road. We stopped in places where there were no phone or power lines, and when we reached the Highlands, it was like going back in time.

Although the majority of the battles were not held in the Highlands, I chose to set my fictional clan, the MacKinlochs, a few miles outside of Glencoe.  This was partly because I wanted them to somewhat removed from the worst of the fighting, and yet, they would still have been faced with the English garrisons establishing minor fortresses to help Edward I.

In Claimed by the Highland Warrior, the heroine Nairna MacPherson was married at the age of fifteen to Bram MacKinloch.  They spent only a single night together in 1298 before Bram's fortress was attacked by the English.  Young and hot-headed, Bram charged in to meet the enemy and was taken as a prisoner of war.

In most cases, medieval prisoners were either ransomed or killed if they proved to be of no use.  But I wanted to create a longer separation between my characters, with years apart.  They needed to grow and mature from childhood sweethearts into a strong hero and a plucky heroine.  It occurred to me that the prisoners of war could be used as labor forces, to build stone walls around the English strongholds or possibly even more permanent structures.  And so, I doomed my poor hero to be imprisoned for many years alongside his younger brother Callum, as a slave to an English Earl. (Yes, I am a mean author. Yes, Bram is a tormented hero.  Who wouldn't be, if you had to lift rocks all day long?)

When Bram is reunited with his wife, he's tormented by the nightmares of his imprisonment and his inability to free his brother.  He can't quite let go of his survivor's guilt, but Nairna helps him to overcome his past and they do fall in love again.

The story of a marriage reunion with a prisoner of war isn't a new one, but it offers so many emotional levels to explore.  What's it like when the man you married is now a virtual stranger?  How do you merge your life with his and try to make the marriage work when you haven't seen each other in seven years? 

I'm giving away a signed copy of Claimed by the Highland Warrior to one lucky commenter.  Just tell me, if you were separated from your significant other, what would you miss the most?  Or if you don't have someone in your life, what traits do you value?  For me, I'd miss the way my husband can look at me and sense what I'm thinking. That, and I'd miss him opening jars for me.<G> 

The Regency Cat

Joanna here, talking about the cats of Regency England.  

What kind of cats can our characters expect to encounter as they go about their adventures?

Lots of cats, for one thing.
While Englishmen may love their dogs, the English householder hated his mice and depended on cats to get rid of them.  Defoe talks of forty thousand cats in London in the mid-1600s.  "Few Houses being without a Cat, and some having several, and sometimes five or six in a House."

 These London cats were working cats --
rangy, businesslike mousers and ratters.  I see them dozing the day away in the kitchen, then rising in the night, roaming the house to do battle with vermin, meeting the enemy behind the plush curtains of the drawing room and down behind the sofas in the parlor.  All the while, the gentlefolk snored in their beds. 

But there were pampered, plump cats as well.  We find them in paintings, batting at a soap bubble, peering into a fishbowl. 

"Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose."
Garrison Keillor

Samuel Johnson was one of many authors who owned cats.  Hodge kept him company as he worked on his dictionary.   Said Johnson, "He is a very fine cat; a very fine cat indeed."

Hodge was fond of oysters, which were then a plentiful, cheap food, eaten by the poor.  Johnson was the one to buy Hodge's oysters, saying his servant Francis might feel humiliated by the task and take a "dislike to the poor creature."  Today, a bronze statue of Hodge, seated on a dictionary, with a helping of oysters at his feet, stands in front of the house he and Johnson shared.

Hodge with his coal black fur would have been pretty typical of the cats of 1800.  Native English cats were shorthairs.  They came in in the same familiar shades of solid and stripe we see today. 

Two native cat kinds are of note . . . the Manx and the Tortoiseshell.

The tailless Manx cat was known to naturalists.  Our hero and heroine in London would probably never have seen one.  As late as 1820, visitors to Manx speak of them as an exotic curiosity found in the huts of the peasantry.   The burning question of the day -- for naturalists -- was whether this peculiar cat was a freak of nature, or the offspring of a female cat and a buck rabbit.  Opinion was divided.

Tortoiseshell cats were recognized as a distinct type.  They looked like their modern counterparts, with markings of mottled orange, white and chocolate.  It was widely known that this sort of cat was almost always female.     

William Cowper, the poet, writes to his cousin, "I have a kitten, my dear, the drollest of all creatures . . .  She is dressed in a tortoise-shell suit, and I know that you will delight in her."
 
Tortoiseshells were called 'Spanish Cats', and there was a general belief they came originally from Spain.   Why folks held this notion, I cannot say.

"Time spent with cats is never wasted."
Colette

So your 1800 folks would have mostly encountered the perfectly ordinary 'native' cats of the British Isles.
Which begs the question --  How did the housecat get to England anyway, and when?

Genetic evidence tells us that the domestic cat as breed started out in the 'Fertile Crescent' of the Middle East and spread out from there across the world.  Talking genes, housecats from Kentucky to Kyoto are indistinguishable from Felis silvestris lybica, the wildcat of the Middle East. 

So the Fertile Crescent is where man tamed the cat.  Or vice versa. 

Cats and humans have been together a good long time.  A nine-thousand-year-old grave in Cyrus contains a human skeleton, buried with stone tools and a handful of seashells.  In its own tiny grave, a foot and a half away, lies an eight-month-old cat, its body oriented in the same westward direction as its human companion.

The housecat spread out from the Middle East to the rest of the world.  Not just overnight.  The domestic cat took seven thousand years to reach China and another eight hundred years to make the jump to Japan.
 
Cats didn't spread in Europe much faster.  The first representation of cats in Mainland Greece is on a marble block from 500 BCE. 

Then Romans grain ships from Alexandria in Egypt introduced cats to Roman ports around the  Mediterranean.  Cats followed Romans into northern Europe with their conquests.  Perhaps they perched on top of a knapsack.  Maybe they hitched a ride in the commissary wagons.

A novel must be exceptionally good to live as long as the average cat.
Chesterfield

Oddly, domestic cats seem to have reached the British Isles before the Romans.  Did the Celts, who had kin on both side of the Channel, take their cat with the luggage when they visited? 

Archeologists, delightfully, have found little Fourth Century cat footprints baked into Roman tiles at Silchester in England.  One imagines some brindled tabby named Gaius or Decimus stalking birds across the tile yard, setting his feet down softly in the still-wet clay. 

Six hundred years later, cats found a protector in Hywel the Good, Welsh king and lawgiver.  When he codified Welsh law, he made particular provision for them.  A later version of his law reads:

"The value of a cat is fourpence. The value of a kitten from the night it is born until it opens its eyes, a legal penny; and from then until it kills mice, two legal pence; and after it kills mice, four legal pence, and at that it remains forever. Her properties are to see and hear and kill mice, and that her claws are not broken, and to rear kittens; and if she is bought, and any of those are wanting, a third of her value is to be returned."

I'm not so much talking about dogs here, but I have to add that Hywel's law said a guard dog, if killed more than nine paces from the door, is not paid for.  If it's killed within the nine paces, it's worth twenty-four pence.

They didn't try telling a cat where he had to report to duty, Welsh lawmen not being fools about cats, apparently.

Let a man get up and say, Behold, this is the truth, and instantly I perceive a sandy cat filching a piece of fish in the background. Look, you have forgotten the cat, I say.
Virginia Woolf

Our Regency hero, running down an alley to get away from the bad guys, is going to pass cats who are descendants of cats the Romans knew.  Cats with more than a thousand-year history in England.  They will be largely unremarkable in color and type because cat breeding and the importation of exotic cats from abroad comes later.  It's a Victorian phenomenon.

Cats are not really thought of as 'breeds' at this time. 
With three exceptions.

First off, you got yer Persians. 

Persians go way back as a distinct breed, both in and out of Europe.  This is the Persian cat story: An Italian nobleman, Pietro della Valle, left Venice in 1614 and wandered around the Middle East for a dozen years.  He was inspired to do this, apparently, by an unfortunate love affair.  His loss.  Cathood's gain.

When he was in Persia he wrotes, "There are cats of a species which properly belong to the province of Charazan. Their size and form are like those of the common cat; their beauty consists in their colour, which is grey, spotless, and uniform . . .  their hair is shining, soft and delicate as silk, and so long, that, though more smooth than rough, yet it is curled, particularly under the neck. . . . The most beautiful part of their body is the tail, which is very long and covered with hair of five or six inches in length, and which they turn up over their backs like the squirrel."

Pietro brought home 'four couple' of these cats in 1620.  From Italy, the breed eventually made its way to England.  Interestingly, the Persian cat does not seem to have traveled to England by way of France.  The French naturalist Buffon who wrote in the mid 1700s had never seen a Persian cat.

In England, however, the Persian flourished and multiplies.  They interbred with the English shorthairs, passing their long coat to some of their offspring, who now appeared in a variety of colors.  The cats became so common in England that, by the 1820s, any housekeeper or village spinster would be likely to have one.

A Persian cat would thus be a wholly suitable pet for our Regency heroine, or even our Blofeld-like Regency villain.

A cat is never vulgar.
Carl Van Vechten

The Angora is the second of the exotic breeds that would be familiar to our 1800 folks. 
They were described as "possessed of singular beauty, as it is clothed with long hair of a silvery white appearance, and silky texture; on the neck, from its superior length, it forms a kind of ruff; and the tail, by being thickly clothed with hair of a very fine quality and length, has the semblance of a brush."
The Lady's Magazine, 1800

The Angora was sometimes called the 'lion cat' because that ruff gave it the appearance of a lion.  They were called 'the French cat' till the middle of the Nineteenth Century because they were largely imported from Paris.

Angoras arrived in France in the Sixteenth Century when Nicholas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc imported several from Angora, that is, Ankara Province in Turkey.  The gentle, even indolent, good-natured white cats became favorites at the French Court.  Marie Antoinette kept a small herd of them.  They were said to roam about the table during court functions.

The difference between the Angora and Persian was the Angora had only the slightest undercoat beneath the long, silky outercoat.  Lacking a wooly layer, the hair followed the lines of its body.  The Persian, with coarser hair and a thick undercoat, was . . . well . . . Fluffier.
 
"A fine Angola Cat is as handsome an animal as can be imagined, and seems quite conscious of its own magnificence. It is a very dignified animal, and moves about with a grave solemnity that bears a great resemblance to the stately march of a full-plumed peacock conscious of admiring spectators."
Rev JG Wood

The final distinct and foreign breed our character might encounter in 1800 London is the Chartreux cat -- the 'blue cat'.  It's so called because the fur is "gray ash, blackish brown at the base, the coat is very dense of the sort which, when one sees the gray of the tips and the brown underlaying, the mixed colors make the appearance of the cat to be blue."
 Josephus Flavius Martinet 1778
 
Chartreux  cats were well known in France and the Netherlands.  Rarer in England, but seeing one would not be at all impossible.

The breed, as a distinct type, dates back to at least the Seventeenth Century.  Legend has it they were the "chats des Chartreux" -- the cats kept by the Carthusian monks.
The Carthusians reluctantly point out they have no records of this . . .

So . . .  Those are the cats of 1800 London.  All our favorite and accustomed British shorthairs.  No Siamese, no Burmese, no Japanese Bobtail, no Maine Coon Cats,  But Chartreux, Persian and Angora of a proper 1800s type that does not exactly resemble their modern breed standard.

"I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?"
Death thought about it.  "Cats," he said eventually. "Cats are nice."
Terry Pratchett

 

Adrian Hawkhurst, who will get his own book, Black Hawk, in November, has a small gray tabby cat at British Service Headquarters in London.  It's named 'Cat'.  We don't see much of it, but I know it's there.  

 

What's your favorite literary cat -- either appearing in a book or enlivening the life of an author.  One lucky poster, chosen at random, will win a copy of Forbidden Rose.

Sophie Page & TO MARRY A PRINCE

Anne here, introducing my friend Sophie Page, who's written one of the best of the books timed to come out for the royal wedding — TO MARRY A PRINCE. Sophie has written many category romances as Sophie Weston. In real life, she's Jenny Haddon, former chair of the Romantic Novelists Association of the UK, co-author of Getting the Point, a guide to punctuation, and woman of many parts. She lives in the heart of London.  

The book starts with a classic "cute meet". Bella, the heroine, has been out of the country for a couple of years, counting fish on a tropical island. She returns to London and stays with her best friend Lottie, a rising, savvy PR girl. After a swift makeover and dressed in second-hand clothes, she goes with Lottie to a Very Posh Party. Jet lagged and a little overwhelmed by the crowd, she retreats to a deserted courtyard, only to bring down a curtain of ivy and several major potted plants. And out of the shadows steps a rescuer …

    'I think you'd better get out of there.'
    'I'm trying,' said Bella between her teeth. She was tearing at the ivy that had wound itself round her ankle. But the more fiercely she tore, the faster she seemed to be caught. 'This damned stuff won't let me go.' 
    'Let's have a look.'
    He hunkered down and considered her foot. From where she was sprawled she saw that he had springy dark hair. It looked as if it would sizzle to touch. And she was right, that shirt was silk. Nothing else had that sheen. Pearly white silk, as pure as snow, and here she was, looking like a compost heap. It was enough to make a girl weep.
    'Have I got twigs in my hair?'
    But he was concentrating.  'Hmm. You're certainly tied in pretty tight. Wonder if this ivy is carnivorous?'
    'Thank you for that thought.'
    'No problem.' He slid a finger under one of the tendrils and she yelped, as much from surprise as the increasing constriction. He looked up quickly and she had the impression of dark, laughing eyes and a determined expression.
    'No help for it. In the absence of a knife, I shall have to tear it off with my teeth.'
    He was serious?
    He was serious. He bent his head.

After a couple of brief meetings, Bella sees her his photo in a magazine and realizes who her mystery admirer is. Of course, he's a prince, and not just any old prince of the sort you often find lurking in darkened courtyards, but the Prince, the Prince of Wales, heir to the throne. Her reaction isn't what you might expect.

    She dropped the phone on the table top and rummaged for a hankie. She couldn't find one, so she blew her nose hard on one of the café's paper napkins instead. Granny Georgia would have called it sordid and Georgia would have been right, she thought.
    The phone rang again. She glared at it. But in the end she answered.'What?'
    'You know, then.' He sounded chastened.
    'Know? What do I know? I saw your photo in The Despatch and I know who you are, if that's what you mean.'
    He groaned. 'Hell!'
    'But I don't know why you wanted to play games like that. It's not honourable and it's not kind.' Her voice scraped. She wasn't going to let him hear her crying. Hell, she wasn't going to cry. She cut the call fast. 
    And stocked up on café paper napkins. She even managed to drink some of the latte before he rang again.
    'Bella, don't hang up,' he said as soon as she answered.
    'How do you know my name's Bella?'
    'You told me yesterday when I rang.'
    'Oh.' That took the wind out of her sails a bit.
    'Look, I've handled this badly, I admit.'
    'Oh, I don't know.' She sounded brittle and sophisticated, she thought. Also very angry. 'I think you handled it very well. Kept the girl distracted, avoided giving her a name, even when she asked. And she still didn't twig what a liar you are.'
    That stung him. 'I didn't lie!'
    'Yes you bloody did,' she yelled. 'And you know it.'
    This time she not only cut the call, she threw the phone at the cafe wall, where it broke into bits.
    Well, at least it gave her something to do. She went to buy a replacement, a smartphone this time. She'd got a job now.
    It rang as soon as the chip was in place.
    'Ignore it,' she told the startled salesman. 'A nuisance caller.'

And so we're off to a gorgeous, fun, rocky courtship.
 
Anne: Your heroine is a delight, and I loved her family as well — her famous explorer father who's also a rabid anti-royalist, her mother the snob who can't wait to show off the Prince to the golf club ladies, her stepfather who's cautious but kind. And then there's the best friend, Lottie, and the various members of the prince's household. You do minor characters so well. Who was your favourite?

Sophie:  I never think of them as minor characters, they're just people with their own story going on somewhere else. In this book, I have to admit I have a weakness for the King. I didn't plan it—I thought he was going to be just another inarticulate middle aged Englishman who didn't do soppy stuff like feelings. But then I found he had a passion for steam engines and ran away from string quartets and suddenly he was a real person. And then, when I never expected it, he started to critique Richard's strategy for proposing to Bella and that made me laugh so much I couldn't bear to cut it out. But he has a thoughtful, rather sad side, too, which I didn't discover for a very long time.    

Anne: Yes, the King was wonderful. Another thing I enjoyed about this book was the research you obviously put into it. You didn't just make up a convenient monarchy, you devised a very plausible alternative history for Britain. Tell us a little about it.

Sophie:  I've always loved history and the Georgian/Regency period is a favourite. So much started then – scientific discoveries, political ideas, travel, and the Congress of Vienna in 1815 reconfigured Europe. So I suppose I see it as a turning point, and that is why I went back to that period for the origins of an alternative monarchy, as opposed to the Tudors or the Stewarts, or even the Plantagenets. 

But I also felt a personal connection with the Regent's daughter, Princess Charlotte, who was a favourite of my mother's, after she saw Charlotte's alarming tomb at Windsor. Charlotte died in childbirth in 1817, aged 21. She was the only legitimate heir of King George III at the time. Victoria's parents did not marry until after her death. Indeed, Princess Charlotte's sister-in-law, the bossy Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, married the ageing Duke of Kent precisely in order to achieve an heir, and Victoria was the result. 

I like Princess Charlotte, who had a very thin time of it as a young girl, and I was glad to give her a happier ending. So I imagined that she and her baby son survived, she and Prince Leopold had several more children; that she succeeded George IV, with Leopold as her Prince Consort; and that she reigned in her own right until she abdicated in favour of her son Frederick in 1869. The Hanoverians had a bad record in terms of getting on with their sons, and I thought that Charlotte, tempered by Leopold might just break that particular curse. When she got into a paddy he used to calm her down, saying 'Doucement chérie, doucement.' So she nicknamed him Doucement. It sounds a nice, friendly marriage. He was certainly devastated when she died.

I gave her a country retreat in Scotland (not Balmoral, which was bought by Queen Victoria) because she loved dogs and horses and a good party, and no one does New Year like the Scots. Drummon House figures in To Marry a Prince, as does the royal New Year party. I don't know whether I was flattered or appalled when a Scottish friend emailed me this week to say she'd been to parties like that!   
(For more about Princess Charlotte go here.)

Anne:  Tell us about the hero of this book, Prince Richard.

Sophie: Oh he's a total sweetheart. I know that dark and damn-your-eyes is more immediately sexy but I really like good guys. I could see him as a small boy, terribly serious and wanting to look after his younger brother and sister, while his parents struggled with the really awful old grandfather King, who was totally wilful and more than a bit of a throwback, frankly.

So Prince Richard is really hard working and responsible and determined to do a good job but he's never learned to kick back and have fun or think too much about the things he wants for himself. When he meets Bella and she doesn't know who he is, for the first time in his life he's just a guy chatting up a girl at a party. And that unlocks a completely new side of his personality and he finds himself doing things that he never expected—and enjoying it. Though there's still quite an unreconstructed part of him that expects to order people around, including Bella, and it gets out of hand when he's trying to take care of her. He has to work on that. 

Anne: Something that sets this book above so many of the common-girl-marries-royal-prince stories I've read, is that you deal quite realistically with some of the problems such a relationship would have -- the twitter/on-line community, the press, and particularly the "behind palace walls" etiquette and procedure, and how it impacts on the relationship.

Sophie: I really don't know anything about current Royal protocol and I didn't want to research the present Court too closely, because this is a fantasy. But I had memories of various diaries I had read—like poor Fanny Burney being urged by Mrs Delany to converse with the Queen.'The Queen often complains to me of the great difficulty with which she can get any conversation, as she not only has to start the subject but commonly entirely to support it. And there is nothing she so much loves as conversation. And nothing she finds to hard to get.' That seemed like a sensible Court Rule: only the King or Queen can change the subject. It would keep the hundreds of people they meet every year from being too personal or political—or boring on for ever about their stamp collection. But it would be very difficult to adjust to, if you were used to the usual give and take of conversation.

As for celebrity, well I think that's the curse of our age. Everyone can see how people's private lives and even their sense of themselves, can be skewed by indiscreet photographs and unwary remarks appearing in the press. Purely by chance, and for a quite different and very sad reason, I had members of the Press ringing my doorbell a few years ago. It's a shock—and it doesn't take long to feel paranoid when a News journalist appears on your doorstep and there's a guy with a shoulder cam trained on you standing behind her. My imagination made that jump very easily. 
(For more about the alternative history Sophie created for this book, go here.)

Anne: This is your first single title, isn't it? I hope we'll be seeing more Sophie Page books in future. And so now we come to the Big Question: what will you be doing for the royal wedding?

Sophie:  London is just beginning to buzz about the Royal Wedding. My street is planning a street party—bouncy castles, the lot. There will be lots of screens in pubs and cafés and at least two big free screens in Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park, where people will be able to watch the wedding from inside the Abbey. And only this morning I got an email from a smart London restaurant, which is offering a Royal Wedding Day package, starting with Royal Breakfast on the Terrace, the wedding itself screened live, and then a Gastronomic Experience for lunch afterwards.

One of the nicest things, if you live in London, is to catch sight of the mounted escorts practising on their beautiful horses. I was walking through St James's Park in the sunshine and heard the jingle of harness and the clippety clop of hooves—and as I came round the corner, there they were, riding down the Mall, very correct, with just the odd horse snorting at the early morning traffic. Lovely!

Anne : Sounds gorgeous. Thank you so much for joining us on Word Wenches. 

Sophie: My pleasure, Anne. Thank you for inviting me. 

And now for readers, Sophie will be giving away a copy of TO MARRY A PRINCE to someone who leaves a comment. Will you be watching the wedding of Kate and Prince William or not? Did you watch the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana? What royal weddings have you seen? Share your royal stories.

*Anne again -- since amazon has run out of copies, you might try this site, which has free postage internationally. And while I'm on, here's a fab and fun slideshow of London in Royal Wedding fever.

(1) Guest Michelle Willingham; (2) Black Thorne's Rose

MICHELLE WILLINGHAM, HWW

Honorary Word Wench Michelle Willingham returns on Friday, April 22!  Cara/Andrea will host Michelle's return visit.  Michelle writes historical romance for Harlequin Mills & Boon, in both medieval and Victorian eras.  Join us Friday and as we put out the welcome mat for Michelle!  (Hint:  rumor has it that Michelle might mention her Irish warrior heroes, should the subject happen to come up.

THE BLACK THORNE'S ROSE

Exciting eBook News!

Susan King's very first historical romance, The Black Thorne's Rose, is finally available again -- now in ebook form, newly edited by the author. This medieval tale of a highborn lady and a forest outlaw, praised as "glorious!" by Romantic Times, launched Susan in historical fiction. Check out the romantic adventure of Lady Emlyn and the mysterious Thorne on the following: 

Amazon Kindle

Nook at Barnes and Noble

Kobo

And don't forget to visit Susan's Facebook page!

Ask A Word Wench: What We're Reading

by Mary Jo

These is an older blog topic request, but timeless.  From Mary K. Kennedy: 

"Could the Wenches do a periodic joint blog about recent books that they really enjoyed?  The blog comments have given me some great recommendations for books I would've otherwise panned."

So—just in time to cheer us up at tax season, here are some recent reads by Word Wenches:

From Nicola Cornick: 

I'm currently reading A Royal Affair, which sounds like a racy novel but is actually a non-fiction book by Stella Tillyard, author of Aristocrats, about King George III and the complex and sometimes dark relationships he had with his siblings. It's fascinating stuff and thanks to a fast pace and Stella Tillyard's beautiful writing it grabbed me right from the first. The murky world of Mid-Georgian London is beautifully drawn and the family relationships are engrossing.
 

From Anne Gracie:

In the last few months I've glommed a couple of new-to-me authors, collecting as much of their backlist as has been available. Thanks to wench Nicola who put me onto Susanna Kearsley, I've devoured her books. They're basically contemporary romances with an element of mystery and a strong historical connection; there's often a kind of time-slip or reincarnation theme going. Lovely.

My other big glom author is Trisha Ashley, and I started with Twelve Days of Christmas (also called Twelfth Night in some places) which is still my fave and a keeper I've already reread. Trisha Ashley's books are contemporary romances,  a little in the Katie Fforde vein, but laced with gorgeous pithy humor that often surprises a chuckle out of me.

Finally, because Susan Wiggs is coming to the RWAustralia conference in August, I started a "Wiggsathon" with some friends, where we've been reading  a pile of her books -- in my case, her Lakeshore Chronicles series, which I'd never read any of. Thoroughly enjoyed them, too. Before that I think I'd only read her historicals, of which The Lightkeeper was my standout favorite.

From Pat Rice:

As usual, I’m reading several books at a time and the chance of my finishing any soon may rest on how much reading time I have.  But I did just finish Susan Elizabeth Phillip’s Call Me Irresistible and loved it. I can’t think of another author who can create a conflict out of one character being perfect and the other totally imperfect. The clash is just too funny.

I’m also reading Pati Nagle’s The Immortal, an ebook contemporary fantasy available at bookviewcafe.com and elsewhere. Think Legolas visits your local library and persuades the librarian to help him fight one of his own who is vampirically diseased and threatening humans. Great New Mexico scenery thrown in.

 

 

 

From Cara Elliott/Andrea Penrose:
 

I've been reading historical mystery lately, and just discovered a very interesting new-to-me series by a writer named Imogen Robertson set in Georgian England. Instruments of Darkness features an intriguing cast of characters (a naval captain's wife who is managing a small estate, along with her two young children and teenage sister, and  a reclusive anatomist who turn into a sleuthing team) several puzzling murders, and a dark mystery involving the local lord of the manor, a wounded veteran of the British raid on Concord. The writing style is beautiful-very descriptive, with great characterization. I'm definitely going to be looking for the second book.

I've also belatedly started the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear. I don't why it took me so long. I love the era-WWI England for the first book (with flashback to Edwardian times) and 1920s for the next ones. Maisie is a very unusual heroine, and her sleuthing deals with complex issues, creating the texture and nuances which appeal to me. 

From Susan King:

 
Lately I've been reading lots of nonfiction and a few mysteries, and the book that currently tops the basket beside my reading chair (which is spilling over with research books and wanna-reads) is Alan Bradley's A Red Herring Without Mustard. This is the third in a series that begins with The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. Ever since discovering the detective expertise of Flavia De Luce, an 11-year-old amateur chemist and a determined and brilliant little sleuth, I have been hooked. The delightful Flavia - a mix between Marie Curie, Sherlock Holmes and Pippi Longstocking - along with the charming setting (the English countryside in 1950), and some very clever mystery goings-on are keeping me well occupied and more than a little addicted.

 
From Jo Beverley:

I recently read Naomi Novik's Victory of Eagles. This is the fourth book in the series about a dragon air force in the Napoleonic Wars, starring Temeraire, a mighty dragon. I did enjoy it, especially Temeraire, who is brilliantly portrayed, but I find the long suffering stoicism of  Lawrence, Temeraire's human partner, a bit of a downer.

 

I've also been revisiting Dr Johnson's London: Everyday Life in London in the Mid 18th Century, which is full of interesting details that might come in useful in A Scandalous Countess, my MIP.

  From Mary Jo Putney:

This gives me a chance to talk about several books!  Dorothy Sayers created the marvelous sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, and since her death three more books have written by Jill Paton Walsh.  I’ve read and enjoyed all the Lord Peter mysteries, but romance writer to the core, I particularly like the ones about his courtship and marriage to Harriet Vane, the accused murderess he lost his heart to. 

Hence, I’m really enjoying the continuation books because they take place after Lord Peter marries Harriet.  A Presumption of Death takes up their lives in 1940 while Lord Peter is missing and possibly dead on a secret mission in Nazi Europe while Harriet is home keeping things together with their two children as well as the three children of Peter’s sister.  Naturally, a murder occurs and Harriet is drawn into solving it.  I liked this so much that I’ve bought the earlier continuation, Thrones, Dominations (that one was started by Sayers and completed by Paton Walsh). and I want to read the third, The Attenbury Emeralds, entirely written by Jill Paton Walsh, as well.  Wonderful characters, writing, and stories. 

I also just finished Michael Caine’s second memoir, The Elephant to Hollywood.  As he says cheerfully, he thought his career was about over when he wrote his first memoir 18 years ago, but that didn’t prove to be the case.  He’s great company—warm and good natured, with terrific self-deprecating stories, including how he found his adored wife, Shakira, in a Maxwell House coffee commercial.  There’s also the subtext of how a poor East End boy who had rickets as a child made the amazing journey to international stardom.

Last but hardly least is Homer’s Odyssey by Gwen Cooper.  Homer is the blind kitten Gwen adopted when no one else wanted him.  Instead of growing up to be a fearful invalid, he turned into an intrepid blind wonder cat, capable of leaping five feet straight into the air to catch flies, and gathering legions of adoring fans.  He also became a role model for Gwen making changes in her own life.  Excellent writing, and a wonderful tale for cat lovers and others.

That’s it for now!  I hope you all saw books you’d like to try. 
Mary Kennedy, you’re the winner of The Bargain, my April book.  (Or another if you have that one.)

We Wenches are considering following Mary's suggestion of occasionally posting other "What We've Been Reading" blogs.  What do you think?  Would you like to see more such posts?

And what have

Mary Jo

 

An Interview with Mia Marlowe!

 Nicola here! Today I am very happy to welcome as our Word Wench guest historical author Mia Marlowe. Mia tells me that she learned much of what she knows about storytelling from singing. A classically trained soprano, she devised back stories for her characters as part of her preparation for operatic roles. Since she’s worn a real corset, and had to sing high C’s in one (and kudos for that - I used to be able to do one or the other but not both together!), she empathizes with the trials of her fictional heroines. But in Mia’s stories, they don’t die in a Parisian garret. They get to live and keep the hero! For more on Mia and her books visit www.miamarlowe.com.

______________________

Here, Mia shares with us some of the research that has gone into her latest release, Touch of a Thief:

 “First, thank you for having me here today, Word Wenches. Since I adore history, I love your blog’s attention to historical detail. I'm a frequent lurker, so when Nicola invited me to guest blog I was thrilled.

Not all my research ends up in my novels. All the little tidbits are delicious, but what really fascinates me is learning how people thought about themselves and their place in the world and how these things change over time. Now, for example, adoption is lauded as a way to form families where none existed before. It was not always so. Adoption was unknown in England until the mid 20th century. Fostering, yes. Adoption, no. This is apparently a little known fact because I’ve read several highly acclaimed authors whose characters are supposedly adopted in the 19th century and go on to inherit titles and lands. Hereditary titles were all about bloodlines, so this could never have actually happened. The family to which a person was born, who his progenitors were, determined his place in the world. “Blood will out,” meaning a person’s lineage will show in their subsequent behavior, was taken quite seriously.

Because the idea of adoption was foreign to the Brits, it’s not surprising that they set aside the Indian custom of adopting a male heir when one was not born to a ruling potentate. According to British India's Doctrine of Lapse, any principality in which the ruling line failed to produce a male heir would be considered "lapsed." The kingdoms were stripped from their hereditary rulers and claimed by the British Crown. I used this inflammatory policy to set up a conflict in Touch of a Thief. My hero's best friend is Prince Sanjay, whose fictional Indian kingdom was lost to him because he was an adopted heir. In real life, Lord Dalhousie added in excess of three million pounds sterling to the Crown’s coffers with this policy. Per annum. The kingdom of Amjerat in Touch of a Thief is my own invention, but plenty of real cases of usurpation occurred. In one princely state, when the Rana died without a son to succeed him, his queen Lakshmi Bai adopted an heir in defiance of the British. Not to be set aside lightly, Lakshmi Bai donned warrior’s gear and led her people in armed rebellion. The uprising was put down, but she died fighting at the head of her force and has become an icon of feminine courage in India.

Though the action in Touch of a Thief takes place in London, Paris and Hanover, what happens in Delhi has a big impact on the main characters. My hero is trying to recover The Blood of the Tiger, a red diamond that was stolen from an Indian temple and is now en route to the Queen’s collection. He hopes returning the gem will help cool the tempers of the natives and diffuse a powder keg of unrest. Unfortunately, the Doctrine of Lapse has already upset the populace of India. When the new Enfield rifle is introduced to the Indian army and rumors fly that the cartridges are greased with pig or cow fat (anathema to both Hindus and Muslims), it’s the tipping point that leads to the disastrous Sepoy Mutiny. But that’s a subject for another blog…

Starred Review from Publishers Weekly for Touch of a Thief : “Marlowe weaves a gentle paranormal element into this delightful 19th-century romance. When a cursed red diamond is stolen from a temple in Amjerat, India, Capt. Greydon Quinn travels to London to recover it, accompanied by incognito crown prince Sanjay. They set a tempting trap of gems to catch the Mayfair Jewel Thief and force him to help them--but the thief turns out to be penniless Lady Viola Preston. Traveling to Paris uneasily posed as newlyweds, Viola and Greydon indulge their powerful lusts until they discover that Viola's supernatural gift for hearing jewels speak their histories lets her in on Greydon's secrets. The likable and quick-thinking protagonists sail through the challenges of both court and crime, swapping witty, sharp dialogue. Marlowe perfectly integrates Viola's paranormal sensitivity, with real problems balancing its obvious benefits. Both historical and paranormal readers will love this crossover tale.”

Touch of a Thief will be released on April 26, but I'm pleased to offer an advance copy to a randomly selected commenter. I love to talk with readers so if you leave a question, I will be by to answer. Thanks again for having me today!

Thank you to Mia for such a fascinating glimpse into the background to Touch of a Thief! Her question for you is: One of the themes in Touch of a Thief is injustice. What inequity makes your blood boil?

A Life on the ocean waves....

Hi, here's Jo, with a bit about starting a career in the Royal Navy way back when.

The quote above -- "A life on the ocean wave..." is from 1858, too late for me. And it is "wave," not "waves" as I intstinctively thought, which I find odd. One wave? Was that the way it was said back then? More likely it was poetic licence to rhyme with rave.

A life on the ocean wave! A home on the rolling deep!
Where the scattered waters rave, and the winds their revels keep!

The author of the original poem, Epes Sargent, had at least been to sea, with his father, a ships master. Yes, yes, I followed a research byway. Doesn't one always? You can read about Sargent here.

I have to admit to having little interest in the navy. For some reason it doesn't grab my imagination, and I've never been able to get into Patrick O'Brian's novels. I did enjoy the film, Master and Commander, though I've never been much into Russell Crowe. He is a brilliant actor, particularly in physical, manly roles. 

However, we can't always have ex-military heroes be from the army, so I went for the navy for Lord Dracy, the hero of my MIP A Scandalous Countess. (February 2012) The navy fit because he also comes from a poorish family. Gentry, yes, but his father's a clergyman, brother to a Lord Dracy, a small fish in the peerage pond.

As Dracy's left the navy when inheriting the title, I don't have to do too much naval work (I hope -- with a story, one never knows) but I did have to know his likely career path, especially when he would have gone into the navy and his likely rank when leaving.

Thirteen seemed a pretty typical age for being signed up, but I pushed it back to twelve because I wanted him there young. As I wrote the book, I realized I needed to know his rank when he left active service, so I went poking around in real naval careers.

I started with the obvious case, Nelson, 1758-1805. My hero is 26, so what rank did Nelson achieve by that age? Nelson became a midshipman -- the lowest officer rank -- on HMS Raisonnable in 1771 at the typical age of thirteen. At 17 he was an acting lieutenant, by 19 a full lieutenant, and the same year given command of a tender. At 20, he was Master and Commander of the brig HMS Badger. By 1784, at aged 26, he'd had an active and brilliant naval career and was captain of HMS Boreas, sent to enforce the Navigation Acts around Antigua.

Um, well, Dracy's not like Nelson. Whoever was?

The images are from the Natonal Portrait Gallery.

I next looked at the famous Captain Bligh. 1754-1817. (I was surprised to find he was older than  Nelson.) He was signed up for the Royal Navy at seven! The implication of the wikipedia article is that this meant he went to sea over the next ten years, at least part time, to get sea-going experience. However, he didn't become a midshipman until aged 17, interestingly in the same year as Nelson. Nelson had aristocratic connections and joined a ship captained by an uncle. Was Blight delayed for lack of influence?

By 26 (1780) Bligh was sailing master (the officer in charge of navigation, and ranked as a lieutenant) on Cook's ship, the Resolution. That was the expedition in which Cook was killed, and in 1780 he returned to London with the sad news.

These young men were doing remarkable things, as were many of their contemporaries. It's part of why I write about young men in my historicals -- the late teens and twenties was where they were most involved in active, exciting lives.I refer you to an article I wrote called In Praise of Younger Men. It was inspired by the injustice of Wallace, in Braveheart, being acted by a middle-aged man. Perhaps someone had been looking at too many Victorian portrayals of the man, who died at about 30 years of age.

In my view, if a Georgian man's still finding himself by his mid to late twenties I'm asking, what's he been doing since about 13?

Questions. What's your feeling on that? Do young heroes seem wrong to you, even if you know how many great achievements belong to the young?

What's your ideal age for the hero in a historical romance?

Another example is Edward Pellew -- 1757-1833, who was a highly regarded naval officer. He joined  the navy in 1770 -- aged 13 again. In 1775, aged 18, he got into such an argument with his captain he was put ashore at Marseille. You'd think that would get him court-martialled, but apparently not. Perhaps his arguments were justified. He makes his way home and joins another ship, still a midshipman. By 26, he was post captain of a ship engaged in heroic, active service.

Richard Pearson was born in 1731,so closer to a contemporary of Dracy's. He's not so prominent, so I couldn't find a great deal, but he did well during the Seven Years War, in which Dracy also serves, but when it ends in 1763, he's still a lieutenant at aged 32. In peacetime he suffered from lack of patronage and only became a post captain in 1773.

Implications for my story.

Dracy went into the navy at aged 12 in 1751, and from 1756 to 1763 was part of the Seven Years War. He does his duty well and rises to first lieutenant by the end of the war, but peacetime presents few opportunities. When he inherits, he leaves the navy with few regrets. He's never fallen in love with ships and the sea, and like Nelson and others, he's always suffered from sea-sickness.

But perhaps 14 years in the navy is good preparation for dealing with Georgia, Lady Maybury, widow, not yet twenty-one, but accustomed to being in command of her life.

Question.

Why do you think there are so many more ex-army men in historical romance? Is the army more romantic than the navy? Is leading a charge more heroic than directing a naval battle?

Oh, by the way, that other famous naval song, Hearts of Oak, the official march of the Royal Navy, dates to the late 1750s, at the beginning of the Seven Years War, so Dracy can refer to it. I remembered to check!  

Interesting that it refers to invasion, always able to stir a Briton's heart.

Come, cheer up, my lads, 'tis to glory we steer,
To add something more to this wonderful year;
To honour we call you, as freemen not slaves,
For who are so free as the sons of the waves?
Heart of oak are our ships, jolly tars are our men,
we always are ready; Steady, boys, steady!
We'll fight and we'll conquer again and again.

They swear they'll invade us, these terrible foes,
They frighten our women, our children and beaus,

But should their flat bottoms in darkness get o'er,
Still Britons they'll find to receive them on shore.

Heart of oak are our ships, jolly tars are our men,
we always are ready; Steady, boys, steady!
We'll fight and we'll conquer again and again.

The picture is The Fighting Temeraire, by Turner, showing a famous battleship, the last one that had fought at Trafalgar, being towed into harbour to be broken up for scrap.

""And she's fading down the river, But in England's song for ever, She's the Fighting Téméraire." Sir Henry Newbolt. Of course, Naomi Novik took the name Temeraire for her dragon in the series by that name. Brilliant choice.

I can only remember writing one other significant naval character, the hero's brother in Lady Beware. I'll give a copy of that book to a randomly selected commenter on this blog.

An Unlikely Countess has spent four weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list, and done simil

arly well on the other major lists. Thank you!

Jo

 

 

 

 

 

SUNDAY ANNOUNCEMENTS

BUSY, BUSY!

April is a busy month for the Wenches!  Anne has just returned from a writers' retreat in Sydney, and the Australia Romance Readers Convention in Bondi.  Pat and Joanna are heading for home after attending the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention in Los Angeles.  For those Wenches living on this side of the pond, the due date for filing federal Income Tax Returns (which are normally due on April 15) is April 18 this year, due to Emancipation Day in Washington, DC on April 16.   Then on April 21 Pat will be guest blogging over at Romance Bandits. Also, April is the month many of us will be celebrating Easter, Passover, and Anzac Day (Australia).

SAVE THESE DATES

We have some great guests (and one AAW date) lined up for April.  Mark these dates on your calendar:

April 13 - Mia Marlow (host:  Nicola)
April 15 - Ask-a-Wench (host:  Pat)
April 22 - Michelle Willingham (host:  Andrea)
April 25 - Sherri L. Smith (host:  Mary Jo)

WINNERS

We have two new winners since our last announcement!  Irma Sams won a book from Susan Fraser King, and Amy Kathryn won a book from Mary Jo Putney.  Congratulations, winners!

ANNIVERSARY

Next month will be a milestone for the Wenches:  we'll be celebrating the Big Five--our fifth year of blogging together!  During those five years we've seen many blogs come and go, and we hope you'll forgive us for taking pride in being one of the longest running group writing blogs on the Internet.  As we've done in past years, we'll be celebrating our anniversary in style, and we'll be sure to include our loyal readers in the celebration.  We'll publish details of the celebration as the date nears.

A REMINDER

Remember to drop by on Sundays for updates and announcements.  Any time we have news, we'll publish it in a Sunday announcement.  This includes the names of book winners.  Sometimes we've had to choose an alternate winner when the first winner never gets back to us with their mailing address.  Most of the time we can dig up an e-mail address for the winner, but occasionally the only way we have of notifying a winner is through the Sunday announcement and the Winners sidebar.  So do make it a point to check to see if you've won a book!  We do love to give away books to our readers!

Interview with Pat Rice: Evil Genius

Anne here, interviewing wench Pat Rice about her most recent innovation, self publishing in e-book form. Pat, with the growth of e-book buying, we are seeing more and more well-known authors putting out their own, new-and-original e-books, in addition to their usual publications by major publishers. What made you decide to join their ranks?

Pat: mainly because I had a story that doesn’t fit genre boundaries. Evil Genius is not historical and not a romance, although there’s one hunky spy hiding in the attic who might have intentions toward my peripatetic heroine. But she has an eccentric family, a murdered grandfather, and Washington D.C. to conquer first, so romance must wait. 

Anne: It sounds wonderful. You do have a way with eccentric characters, and I liked your heroine from the opening lines: 
    My name is Ana, and I’m a doormat.
    I’m also one of the best virtual assistants in the world, if you’ll pardon my modesty. Being a virtual assistant and a wuss often go hand in hand. Most of us are introverts who prefer to work in cyberspace because human nature is messy and unpredictable and computers aren’t.
    My excuse is that my family is messier than most and so far beyond volatile as to establish whole new spectrums of the definition, so being their doormat involves a great deal of mud and muddle that I couldn’t take anymore.

But her family, starting with her brilliant, goth, nine-year-old half-sister, EG, manages to track Ana down, and that's where the fun starts. What inspired you to write this story?

Pat: I wish I could say I dipped into the well of creative genius and returned with a pail full of characters, but my head doesn't work that way. I started this book years and years ago, when I was tired of writing romance and wanted to expand my repertoire. I asked my agent what I should write. She said whatever made me happy. Ana made me happy. At the time—back before tiny computers were so readily available and USB drives were barely known, Ana was on the cutting edge of the technical world. So she may have been driven a little bit by my IT husband who would tell me all kinds of fun things computers would do some day. Alas and alack, that cutting edge had to be cut as time went on!

Anne: Yes, technology changes so fast, doesn't it? But people don't. This book has a great cast of quirky, fun characters, including the one who begins his communications via a lamp (electronically, not as a ghost.) Tell us about a couple of your favorite characters.

Pat: I adore them all. Ana, of course, who carries a cap gun in her purse to scare off thieves. And EG, who pessimistically predicts the family's downfalls—because she's psychic or because the family always fails? Nick, the ascot-wearing Brit half-brother who feels guilty when he breaks the bank at casinos. But yes, the spy in the attic has so much potential, he has to be one of my favorites. He doesn't go out in public often, but when he does, he wears diamond cufflinks.

Anne: This is a bit of a departure for you, isn't it? A kind of murder mystery, not historical and not a romance. Was it fun to play in a different playground?

Pat: Lovely fun! I've always written character-driven books with heavy duty plot, so pretty much all I left out here was the direct romance and the sex. There's a hint of romance to come, but the book is basically family relationship with a mystery. And a spy. Don't forget the spy!

Anne: Nobody could forget the spy. You're a "fly-into-the-mist" kind of writer. Did anything surprise you along the way?

Pat: Just about everything surprised me. I had so many things jumping off the page that I probably excised as much as I left in.  It was really difficult taming this wild and wooly story into something that might please readers as much as it did me.

Anne: Well, it certainly pleased this reader. Is this a one-off story, or do you plan to write a sequel?

Pat: That, my friend, remains to be seen. I definitely have sequels planned. But this is the first time I've tried publishing directly without a big NYC house promoting for me. It's a daunting task, and I'd much rather write than promote. So if sales don't justify a sequel, I can't afford to take time away from my contracted work to play in new waters.  So if readers really want the sequel, they need to encourage friends to buy the book!

Anne: I really hope lots of people buy it, because I want to read the next story. (Selfish? me? LOL) Could you give us a small taste of this book?

Pat: Of course, here's an excerpt... in which Ana and family learn their grandfather is dead: 

    “May I help you?”  a voice intoned from the intercom hidden behind a pot of pothos cascading from a sphinx head near the door.
    “Anastasia Devlin here,” I informed the disembodied voice. “I wish to see my grandfather.”
    Nicholas elbowed me, and EG scowled, but I didn’t see any purpose in terrifying the old guy by telling him a regiment of Magda’s offspring was at the door. 
    The silence following my announcement was striking. I opted for the fantasy of imagining a supercilious butler progressing through marble hallways, dusting the woodwork in his anxiousness to garner the approval of the prodigal grandchild.
    “There are no grandfathers present,” the voice finally replied, striking a blow to my comfortable reverie.
    I am not normally a combative person. I say please and thank you when called upon. But there were times my Irish temper blew the top of my head—
    Seeing the gleam in my eye, Nicholas grabbed my elbow and jerked me down the stairs. “Come along. We can take a hotel room and discuss this.”
    EG scampered for the gate without waiting.
    I shook him off and returned to slam the knocker again. “What have you done with my grandfather?” I shouted at the sphinx, rattling the door.
    And I was serious. I remembered this house. I remembered a tall man with thick pepper-and-salt hair and a bristly mustache, and I wanted his hugs back again. If these monsters had done anything to my grandfather, I’d make them pay. Tears actually stung my eyes as I slammed the knocker, and disappointment and grief spilled into the fury. I wanted my childhood back. 
    I knew I couldn’t have it, but EG deserved a  real childhood with kitchen tables and schools and laughing friends. No kid ought to be brought up as I had. I would claw the face off the damned sphinx to give EG the home she needed. This home. Ripped from my subconscious, it had become my reason for living. To hell with Magda and whatever argument had taken us out of our grandfather’s life. I intended to change all that.
    All right, so I had a lot fermenting in the murk of my subconscious, and denial was my middle name. No one ever said therapy helped.
    “Maximillian no longer lives here,” the voice intoned again in an accent more posh than Nick’s. “He passed on two months ago.”
    EG gave her “I told you so” shrug, sat down on the gate step, and began searching the three-inch band of lawn for four-leaf clovers. I knew she’d been covertly hoping her hitherto unknown relative might help Senator Tex, but EG was not only smart, she’s a cynic. My heart bled watching her give up hope.
    Apparently as affected by her plight as I was, Nicholas stepped up to the intercom, shot his cuffs to the proper width from his coat sleeve as if someone could see him, and purred with his best British accent, “Then I suggest you open the door to his heirs, or we will be forced to consult with our attorneys.”

 Anne: Gorgeous. So where can readers find your Evil Genius? 

Pat: At www.bookviewcafe.com and on all other internet e-book sites.

Anne: Having no experience in the area myself, I'm curious as to what process you followed in getting this book ready for publication. 

Pat: I didn't want to put an original work of fiction in the market without proper editing. So when I joined Bookviewcafe's author's co-op to release my Magic backlist and saw what a lovely job they were doing on their new fiction, I brought EG out and dusted her off and began taking e-publishing a little more seriously. Bookviewcafe has awesome editors, artists, and professionals who know how to make an e-book look good. Pati Nagle designed my cover.  Bookviewcafe released the book first and it's available here . They also arranged for reviews and prepared the book for Amazon, B&N, etc. Working together, authors have a wonderful array of tools at their hands!

Anne: It sounds brilliant. It's been a while now since you bought an e-book reader. Has it changed the way you read at all? 

Pat: Oh definitely! When I got the reader, I went through and found all the beginnings of series I've wanted to read and couldn't buy because they're OOP.  Many of them were marked down to $2.99, so I had stacks and stacks of books to test.  Sadly, the publishers insisting on "agency pricing" for new mass markets have curtailed my buying of brand new books. I want books on my reader because I'm tired of throwing out paper books. But I can order paper at a discount and can't with digital, so I'm reading a lot of older books now. Or in different genres that still discount digital.

Anne:  Thanks for the interview, Pat. And for the pre-read of a fun book that made me smile all the way through.

Pat: Thank you for wasting your time on me and Evil Genius!

Anne:  It was no waste, but a pleasure. So, a question for our readers, those of you who have e-readers already, how has it changed your reading/buying habits? And those (like me) who don't, are you getting tempted by the e-book revolution? Or still resisting?

 

The Bargain: And the Wheel Comes Round Again!

by Mary Jo

I love it when a good story comes around again.  <g>  Every now and then, a really good, high concept plot idea strikes, and I had one quite early in my career:

The High Concept

Heroine’s father stipulates in his will that she must marry by age 25, or the bulk of her fortune will pass to her uncle.  Heroine is NOT pleased, so she goes to a military hospital, finds an officer dying of his Waterloo wounds, and makes him a proposition. 

She’ll settle a comfortable income on his governess sister, and in return, the heroine has a husband by the deadline.  Her husband will quietly expire when he meets his own deadline, leaving the heroine a widow in control of her fortune and the hero’s sister set for life. 

Then her husband hasn’t the grace to die, and they’re stuck with each other. <G>  It’s a classic marriage of convenience set-up, and my editor loved it.  So The Would Be Widow was published back in 1988.  The title is pretty much the plot.  (I was told several times that it resembled the plot of Kathleen Woodiwiss’s’ Shanna, a book I’ve never read.  But we all know there are no truly original ideas.) 

The Would Be Widow was the third book I wrote, the second published, and drafting this blog started me thinking about the writing of it. 

Lessons Learned

I was a very new writer, going mostly on instinct, still working as a freelance graphic designer.  TWBW was the only book where I ever kept track of the time.  I fit writing time around graphics, but I wrote the book in the equivalent of three months of 40 hour weeks.  Ah, those were the days!  I’ve never been as efficient since.

This is also the book where I realized that no matter how light-hearted the synopsis I sent to my editor, I would never be a comedy writer.  The book was moving along well plot-wise, but it wasn’t quite working until I gave the heroine some painful back story.  Instantly the story fell into place.  <G> 

Lesson learned: My characters won’t get their happy ending without much wailing and gnashing of teeth.  Many years and books have come and gone since, and that is still the case with my stories. <G>

I also learned lessons in research.  In those distant pre-internet days, I would take a very large tote bag down to Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt city library and pile in possibly relevant books until I couldn’t lift the bag.  Then I’d removed the most recent book so I could lift the bag <g> and stagger home to find nuggets of useful information.  Bibliographies were mined for books that I could send for through Inter-Library Loan. 

Research Then and Now

For TWBW, I researched military hospitals (the picture above is the Chelsea Military Hospital, where Lady Jocelyn found Major David Lancaster) and laudanum and Shropshire and multi-shot pistols, among other things.  In the days of the internet, this kind of research has the quaint quality of walking to school ten miles through the snow and it was uphill both ways. <G> 

Google has put worlds of information at our fingertips.  (That's Shropshire to the left.) But for research books that contribute heavily toward a story, I still want hard copy. 

Good stories have staying power.  When I was doing well with my historical romances, my editor suggested that some of my early Signet Regencies could be revised and expanded into historicals.  Hence, The Would-Be Widow because The Bargain, with more words and more subplot and a bit more sex.  (A very little bit more. <G>) 

Revising a Regency into a Historical Romance

Here’s a little known fact: editing an early book doesn’t make it longer, it makes it shorter as the more experienced author cuts out a lot of the extra words she doesn’t really need.   (Quite possibly swearing under her breath at her previous shortcomings of craft.)  When I revised The Rake and The Reformer, a Super Regency, into The Rake, it ended up 4000 words shorter.  (BTW, Kensington will reissue The Rake next spring.)

Turning TWBW into The Bargain meant cutting extra words and adding ones that enriched the story.  I added a prologue, fleshed out a secondary romance, and added another romantic scene or two. 

That version of the book did well, but it has been out of print for years.  So now The Bargain is back again with a new publisher and a gorgeous, romantic new cover.  The previous cover had a rather pretty bouquet on gold foil, but I like the pensive quality of this new cover.  (Though the hero’s gold epaulet suggests Ruritania rather than the 95th Rifles. <g> )  This time there was no revision, though I’m sure there are still more words than the story needs. <G>

I revised five traditional Regencies into historical romances, and I learned a lot in the process about viewpoint and story structure.  In traditional Regency, I used a lot of different viewpoints.  This made for a lighter touch.  When I revised the books, I narrowed the points of view sharply to two or three characters.  This increases intensity. 

In order to write a book, I have to love the characters and the story, so I also love seeing my book babies come around again.  Here’s part of a review from the original publication, done by Kathe Robin of Romantic Times:

“With several wonderful secondary characters and a lovely romance between David’s sister and his doctor, The Bargain will delight Mary Jo Putney’s fans, new and old.  There is a warmth and charm to this story that will melt your heart and make it sing.  Sheer reading pleasure.”

And here’s an excerpt.

I’ll be giving away a copy of the book to someone who leaves a comment on this post between now and midnight Friday.  It will be a bargain Bargain.  <G> 

Mary Jo

Chocolate—A Sweet History from the Aztecs to Almacks

 
Cara/Andrea here (the NEW Andrea,) talking today about a subject near and dear to our hearts.

Chocolate.

The word sends sweet shivers of craving through most of us. Whether it’s consumed as a sweet or a savory, as a solid, a beverage, an ingredient in baked goods or sauces, few foods are as beloved. (And BTW, there is a medical reason for such euphoria—chocolate contains chemical compounds that trigger the brain to release endorphins, which stimulate a sense of well-being. But more on its medicinal properties later!)

So it’s no mystery that its history is as rich and alluring as its taste.

The more I read about chocolate and its lore, the more I was salivating for the chance to work it into my books. And as I began to create the concept for my new Regency-set historical mystery series, I decided that it was a perfect ingredient to the character of two main protagonists, who are among other things, experts in chocolate! To celebrate the release of SWEET REVENGE—which hits the shelves tomorrow!—let’s take a random nibble through the centuries of our love affair with chocolate.

FOOD OF THE GODS

First of all, a few basic facts about Theobroma cacao (the scientific name for the plant that produces the beans.) There are three distinct types of cacao trees. Criollas are considered the ‘prince of cacao.’ They are very delicate and prone to disease, but produce the highest quality beans. Forasteros are the most common variety and although they are very hardy, they are the least flavorful. Trinitarios, named for the island of Trinidad, are a hybrid, and offer an excellent balance of taste and ease of cultivation. It is a tropical plant that grows roughly within a band 20 degrees north and south of the Equator, and originated in the New World, where archeological evidence shows it was used by the Olmec culture, which flourished in present-day Mexico from c. 1200-300 BC.

Chocolate came to be revered in Mesoamerican culture. According to ancient Aztec legend, the cacao tree was brought to Earth by the god Quetzalcoatl, who descended from heaven on the beam of a morning star after stealing the precious plant from paradise. It’s no wonder that the spicy beverage made from its beans was called the ‘Drink of the Emperor.’ It is said that this xocoatl or chocolatl was so worshipped that it was served in golden goblets that were thrown away after one use.

Chocolate was served during religious rites and celebrations. It was often mixed with flavorings such as vanilla, cinnamon, allspice, chilis, hueinacaztli—a spicy flower from the custard apple tree—and anchiote, which turns the mouth bright red. The Aztecs also believed that cacao possessed strong medicinal properties—indeed, warriors were issued solid cacao wafers to fortify their strength and endurance for long marches and the rigors of battle. (The first energy bars!)

The legend of Quetzalcoatl also held that the god was banished from Earth for bringing the gift of chocolate to mankind, and that one day, he would return in glory. So when the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortez and his fleet sailed over the horizon in 1519, the Aztecs thought he was the ancient god. Alas, poor Montezuma! Though it is recorded that he drank 50 cups of chocolate a day, his magical military elixir proved no match for guns and horses.

A SWEET SECRET

The earliest mention of chocolate in Europe occurred in 1544, when a delegation of Dominican friars returned from Guatemala and presented Philip II with a pot of hot, frothed chocolate. His reaction is not recorded, but I have learned that the Spanish found the Aztec preparation too bitter and spicy for their taste, and so began adding sugar from the cane plantations in the Caribbean islands. They also began to use a molinillo, or whisk, to froth the drink, instead of pouring it back and forth between two cups, as was the Aztec method. (The traditional chocolate pot, invented in the 1600s, has a hole in it lid to allow a molinillo.)

The Spanish kept chocolate their own private secret for many years. (English pirates who preyed on the Spanish treasure fleets sailing from the New World once burned an entire cargo of cacao beans, thinking they were sheep turds!) But by the late 1500s, chocolate had spread to Austria and France. Although there is some debate about how chocolate was introduced into France, the credit most likely belongs to Anne of Austria, daughter of King Philip III of Spain. It is said that that she gave her husband an engagement present of chocolate, packaged inside an ornately decorated wooden chest. (A sweet story, even if it isn’t true.) Chocolate soon became very popular in Catholic countries because Pope Pius V ruled that drinking the beverage did not break the fast, and so it could be taken as nourishment on Holy Days. (Theobroma cacao played a more sinister role in Church history in 1774  when Pope Clement XIV was murdered by the Jesuits, who poisoned his cup of chocolate.)

THE FIRST HEALTH FOOD

The first record of chocolate being used as a medicine came in 1570. Francisco Hernandez, the royal physician to King Philip II, believed that it was beneficial, and prescribed it to reduce fevers and relieve discomfort in hot weather. During the 1600s, Francesco Redi, personal physician to Cosimo III of Florence and one of the leading scientists of his day, spent time experimenting with the creation of decadent recipes for chocolate. Some of his concoctions included drinks perfumed with ambergris, musk and jasmine.

CHANNELING ITS ENERGY

Chocolate finally arrived in England by the mid 17th century. It’s interesting that coffee from the Middle East and tea from the Orient arrived around the same time, and chocolate was the most expensive of the three. Still, it became popular, especially among the elite of London, despite the cost. Samuel Pepys, the great chronicler of his time, made regular mention in his famous diaries of drinking chocolate. By 1700, there were over 2,000 chocolate houses open in London. In fact, White’s, the legendary gentlemen’s club, was originally established by an Italian immigrant, Francesco Bianco—Francis White—who opened White’s Chocolate House in 1693.

LET THEM EAT CHOCOLATE!

Now, recently I have seen a tempest in a chocolate pot swirl on some of the Regency loops regarding edible chocolate. Some people were scolding writers who include such treats in Regency stories, saying it is historically inaccurate. Well, I beg to disagree. My research has shown that chocolate was definitely being consumed in solid form by the late 1700s. In fact, several years ago I interviewed the U. S. head of the French gourmet chocolate company Debauve & Gallet, who provided these tantalizing tidbits of chocolate history.

Sulpice Debauve, was a chemist who served a pharmacist to King Louis XVI. On one of his visits to the royal family, Marie Antoinette complained about the unpleasant taste of her medicines. Debauve came up with the idea mixing it into a solid form of chocolate—a pistole or wafer-like disc that the Queen is said to have adored.  (The company still offers Pistoles De Marie Antoinette . . . a 1.7 lb box costs the princely sum of $200.)

The pistole was first made of cocoa, cane sugar, and medicine mixed together. However, as the queen became enamored with her new sweets, she asked for more variety in tastes. So Debauve became, in essence the first "chocolatier" as he created bonbons with such flavorings as orange blossom, almond milk, Orgeat cream, coffee and vanilla. It’s believed that the queen's favorite was almond milk.

BONAPARTE'S BONBONS

Unlike his royal patrons, Debauve survived the revolution and in 1800 he opened his first chocolate shop on the Left Bank of Paris. By 1804, he had more than 60 shops throughout France. The company claims that legendary chef Antoine Carême and Debauve occasionally worked together, and that the idea for croquamandes—caramelised almonds coated with dark chocolate—resulted from a discussion between the Napoleon and Carême about creating a special treat to celebrate the Battle of Friedland victory in June of 1807. Debauve supposedly went back to his kitchen and voila—a few days later delivered the first croquamandes to the Emperor, who became yet another of history’s chocoholics.

I could go on and on, but space demands I cut this history short. Needless to say there are countless more delicious details anecdotes for those of you who would like to savor a bigger taste of the subject. SWEET REVENGE contains other fun historical tidbits in each chapter opening—along with chocolate recipes!

I leave off with two different questions: Firstly—do you have a favorite form of chocolate, or a favorite brand? (I have a soft spot for classic fudge brownies and Lindt dark chocolate with a touch of sea salt.) And secondly, have ever you discovered a fact in history (like chocolate being eaten during the Regency) that went against conventional wisdom on the subject, and thus took you by surprise? Please share!

Time Flies

As Pat Rice mentioned in her recent Wench blog, I too have been preparing some of my older romances for ebook format. Same stories -- I'm very happy to discover that I really love these books, still love the stories and the characters -- but oh, that early overwriting had to go. So I've been editing them, trimming for wordiness (yow), over-the-top phrases, a plethora of exclamation points in dialogue (shudder), and some embarrassing indulgences in ooky sentiment. And I think these updated ebooks will actually be better books than the originals. And they'll be graced with beautiful new covers and will, I hope, read like fresh new romances. I'm very excited about these -- you'll hear more about them soon!

Working with the older romances got me to thinking about the differences between my first romances (my first book, The Black Thorne's Rose, was published in 1994) and the romances and historical novels I've been writing in the 2000s. One major difference is length -- I was getting away with a much longer book 10 or 15 years ago! And the length of the book is often influenced by the time frame within the story. I find it easier to write a shorter length novel (100,000 words and under) if the time frame of the events is on the shorter side. In some of my books, now and then I have to skip through time like a stone tossed over water, just skimming the surface ... and the bigger historicals sometimes need that ... I usually prefer to dive deeply into the story, timewise.

I wrote a blog about time a while back, so ... like my old romances about to become new ebooks ... I dusted that off for you here. I've been so busy editing this week I was short on blogging time -- and when that happens, we Wenches ring a bell and holler "Wench Classic!!" ... and so here you go:

TIME FLIES

Tempus fugit.
– Ovid
Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.
–Groucho Marx

How interesting that we sometimes refer to reading in terms of time (it being a temporal occupation on one level)-- I flew through that book, we’ll say. Oh I crawled through that book. Oh I had no time to finish it; oh, I have lots of time for reading this weekend (I wish!!).

This time awareness also applies to writing the books. Mostly I crawl through writing the first half, and fly through the second half racing the deadline. Authors can spend months, even years, writing a book, and yet readers speed through that story in a few days, a day, even an afternoon. So on the one hand, there's the time we take to write them; and there's the time we take to read them. And then there's the time frame covered in the story.

Romances have gotten much shorter over the last decade or two. Many authors are now expected -- and contract-bound -- to wind a story up in under 100,000 words, and shorter if possible. Ten or 15 years ago my books were around 120,000 words -- that gave me lots more time (so to speak) to develop the story. So it's an interesting challenge for an author when the book length is shorter. And there are lots of reasons for this -- paper costs are up, available reading time is down, and the fast-food mentality is now very much a part of the publishing industry, and tastes in reading have altered. We speed through books like we speed through so many things now. No more the leisure hours of the 19th or early 20th century. The planet is a quicker place, and books are quicker, in a sense, too.

And many romances that I've read in the last few years seem to cover shorter time frames -- a few weeks, a few days, a day or two for the development of a romance as well as a story. It's true in my own stories–-there have been times when the story takes only a few days or a two weeks. That's okay, says my editor. We don’t want the hero and heroine apart for too long. Readers don't have patience for that. Or do they?

I remember reading big hefty juicy romance reads where the stories took months, a year, even years to develop between hero and heroine. But the genre continues to develop and change, and is never stagnant. Fiction itself, whatever the form, is not a stagnant art --it keeps altering and morphing its shape. Is it an improvement in romance to have the hero and heroine meet quickly, jump each other’s bones quickly, fall in love (in whatever order), resolve all differences and live happily ever after in a matter of, say, ten days?

It might seem unrealistic-- but it certainly can happen when people fall in love.Love at first sight, together with a strong conflict--how much time does that fictional couple really need to get to a resolution? Not much, really. A fast time frame can add immediacy and a sense of urgency to a story, which heightens other tensions in the book, which helps us sit on the edge of our seats, and fly through a book. The time frame is brief and to the point, and the story is focused.

One of my Sarah Gabriel novels, To Wed A Highland Bride, has a time frame of about a month. And I had to stretch that out! It could have been two weeks, easy. So I established an earlier meeting for the hero and heroine, a couple of months prior to the action of the book -- a previous encounter years earlier can set up both a conflict and an attraction that will ignite when the story opens and carry through the rest of the book. For this particular novel, the story didn't really need a long time frame. And I found that the shorter time span helped focus the lens of the romance, that hyper-focus that centers on the H & H.

There isn’t much room for extraneous subplots and characters when the manuscript itself needs to be short, and the time frame of the story is brief. But the story doesn't need to drag on to pad in more time to make it "believable." Once a story gets rolling–-which is hopefully right off the bat–-we want it to keep going at a good clip, so that we can roll right along with it.

So time does fly in lots of romance. The technique works better with some storylines than others, of course. Love at first sight is perfect for a shorter time frame, which needs an intense, passionate attraction–-real chemistry at work between two potential lovers--and it needs intense conflict to challenge that potential happiness. We love romance ... but happiness can be boring. Really it can. Give us contrast, challenges surmounted, impossibilies conquered! And then we can enjoy the happiness.

What’s also interesting is that sometimes a writer does not make the time frame clear. The ticking clock that works so well in other genres-–mystery, romantic suspense, thriller and horror, for example--isn’t essential to romance, per se. Yet a bit of ticking-clock tension gives the conflict added fuel and keeps the story moving toward an exciting, adventurous, passionate, satisfying conclusion. A thriller author will make sure you see that clock, even noting it scene by scene -- but sometimes in romance, it's better to blur that clock.

But sometimes that time pressure is part of the fun -- that speed, that heady rush, that delirious experience of falling in love and conquering the odds to get there.

Writing mainstream historical fiction, I've found that the time frame can be just the opposite. A story may cover several years, decades, a lifetime for the main character. Some events need whole chapters, and other stretches of time can be covered in sentences or paragraphs. The story could span two or twenty or forty years, yet the story has to keep moving. And yet the writer of mainstream fiction may have a tight word count too -- my mainstream fiction novels come in at a little over 100,000 words, only a little longer than my romances, and yet they cover decades.

What do you all think of the shorter time frames in historical romance novels, and the faster pace of the shorter books we are seeing more often in all genres? How do you feel about larger historical novels that cover great gobs of time – do you lose interest? Do you feel satisfied by the story, or impatient? Or do you even notice the passage of time in a novel?

I have an advanced reading copy of QUEEN HEREAFTER looking for a home -- and I would love to send it to a reader chosen at random -- so please leave a comment and enter to win!

~Susan