Word Wenches

Scary Stuff

Hi, here's Jo (with a pic of Charlie Dracula) putting together the Halloween blog. The Wenches got talking about scary stuff. Turns out, none of us like to read or watch anything that scares us, though some of us did when young. Perhaps it's because our writers' imaginations make imaginary horrors too real? We even have a real ghost story to tell.

I hope that you'll share your thoughts about scary books and films, and especially any real ghost stories if you have any!

Pat Rice

I'm among the wimps who can't read or watch horror. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane freaked me out at a very early age, and I never could watch an entire episode of Hitchcock's The Birds even on a small B&W TV. I loved Poe's poetry when I was a kid...but that was poetry. How could bad things happen in rhyme? I don't watch TV shows with violence and suspense, and I don't read horror and thrillers even now. They literally give me nightmares.

I think my aversion to all things scary is because we live in a scary world. Reading the newspapers is difficult enough without imagining worse. And that might be another key. I can imagine far, far worse than what I read in the papers, and I can "see" the events in a horror novel as if they're real. I just don't need those images in my head!

Food in Books

Anne here.  

When I was a child, one of the things I enjoyed about some of my favorite children's books were the food descriptions — I suppose kids are perpetually hungry. In Enid Blyton stories, for instance, the kids were always having picnics, and although the things they ate were ordinary enough — ham sandwiches, apples, lettuce, tomatoes, mustard and cress, home-made ginger beer and lashings of boiled eggs with a little paper screw of salt to sprinkle on them — they still sounded wonderful. And somehow that little detail of the paper screw containing salt really appealed. 

Enid Blyton knew the power of food over children. In her many boarding school stories, the kids always had a midnight feast, and oh, the longing in me to participate in something so exciting as a midnight feast. I'm sure it was the reason I wanted to go to boarding school - because you had midnight feasts and adventures.

Visiting Other Worlds

Nicola here. There’s a meme going around on Facebook at the moment that is proving very popular. It asks: “You have been transported to the location in the last book you read. Where are you?” The answers flood in, from Scotland to the West Indies, from the New York of the future to London in 1515 and all times and places in between.

This meme set me thinking about world building, creating a setting that is real and vivid enough to make readers believe in it, literally to be transported there in their imaginations. Whether it is the fantasy world of a paranormal novel or the literally out-of-this world creation of science fiction, the writer faces the challenge of making it real for the reader. This happens in historical fiction as well, of course. We have a framework within which we set our stories; the era, the politics, the social history, fashions, etiquette etc and from within all that detail we craft a world that is compelling (I hope), a world which makes the reader feel that they are stepping back in time.

Travel

Hi, Jo here. I'm going to be nerdy today, because I have to share some tid-bits from a wonderful book I stumbled across in a clearance catalogue. LONDON OBSERVED: A Polish Philosopher at Large, 1820-24.

You can get your own copy quite cheaply on line. This link will take you to Amazon in the US.

1820-24 a little after my current books, which are set in 1817, but close enough to enrich my knowledge base because Krystyn Lach-Szyrma is the sort of traveler who loves to record details of his travel. I'm simply going to share some. I never take one source as gospel, and I have questions about some bits. He might not always be accurate, and I'm reading in translation, but here it is.

Crossing the Channel. "The ships that are used to cross the sea are called packet boats.... They have quite a spacious cabin which is illuminated by window in the deck. On the sides of the cabin, in two rows one above the other, there are frame-like compartments allotted for bunks. The bedclothes are clean and white, as Englishmen will not use any other. Screen curtains for the beds are green or red.... The charge for the crossing is one guinea a person."

Regency Masquerades

by Mary Jo

Such a deal!  In Regency Masquerades, six talented Regency veterans have released a box set containing six full length Regency novels, including the RITA winning Gwen's Ghost by Alicia Rasley and Lynn Kerstan.  (This might be the only RITA won by a writing team and the book is great, with Alicia and Lynn writing different characters so the story is integrated seamlessly.)  AND they're offering the set for a special introductory price of 99 cents to reward their long term readers!  
 
So here, forthwith, are Alicia Rasley, Allison Lane, Brenda Hiatt, Lynn Kerstan, Elena Green, and Gail Eastwood:


Alicia: What's In a Mask?
Romance readers love masquerades.  A masquerade implies intrigue, elegance, illusion, and even naughtiness.  A masquerade can be used to create alter egos and secret lives.  But the real fun comes when the mask slips, revealing all that the players have been hiding.  That's when love steps up to accept, forgive, and forge new identities and alliances.
 
In this boxed set, we have assembled six novels, each with some variation of the ever-variable theme of masquerade. Whether it's disguise or deception, the characters have reason to mask themselves in some way. As you read, see if you can tell how each character unwittingly chooses a "mask" that reveals the true self… and somehow aids in true love.

Heroes—Is It In The Eyes . . . Or Elsewhere

Cara/Andrea here,
I have been thinking about men recently—purely as research, of course. In starting a new book, the first part of the process for me always entails creating the hero. I usually have a notion of the basic elements of his character—rakish rogue, sensitive artist, honorable soldier, but I need to really visualize him in order to flesh out the nuances. (Though most of the real details come as the story develops. Being a total pantser, I confess that I’m not always sure exactly how he’s going to react —despite my own assumptions he often surprises me!)

A Land of Alpha Castles!

Nicola here and today I'm talking about alphas but in a slightly different way. I’ve recently come back from a trip to Northumberland, in the far north of England. Northumberland is a history-lover’s paradise. It has more castles than any other county in England. It’s past has been shaped by violence and conflict: Viking raids, Scottish incursions, battles and rebellion. I was staying in the village of Bamburgh, in the shadow of the iconic Bamburgh castle, once the seat of the Anglo Saxon Kings of Northumbria.

I think of Northumberland as the land of ""alpha castles," big, strong and built to show power and military might. Sometimes you will come across fortified houses that have been given the title "castle" but when you look at them up against the big ones their pretty little crenellations look as though they will fall over at the first sight of a trebuchet. It was important that Northumberland's castles could withstand serious attack, at least until the 17th century when the threat from Scotland diminished.

The First Book Crush

Susan here – recently we Wenches were talking about heroes, particularly the first fictional heroes we encountered early on that made our juvenile writer's hearts go pitty-pat. Who were our first book crushes? Which heroes did we want to take away from the book and keep around forever? Those questions led us to wondering how those fictional heroes helped form our earliest ideas of what a hero truly is. Did these early crushes work their way into our novels? Certainly they influenced the heroes we would write later in our novels.

Here’s what the Wenches had to say about their very first book crushes:

Jo Beverley:

Perhaps Robin Hood in the Carola Oman book, but truly it has to be The ScarletPimpernel. I think I was about ten when I plunged into it, and though it's what we'd now call "sweet," it's packed with drama and passion. Unlike many, I don't swoon for rough diamonds. I go for smooth and elegant heroes, so Sir Percy Blakeney, for all his foppishness, appealed. Add in his brave adventurous exploits and his natural leadership of his equals and he was my sort of guy, even when young. We see a similar pattern in Francis Crawford of Lymond from the Dorothy Dunnett books -- supremely elegant and gifted, devious, brave and resourceful, and probably my ultimate hero -- but I discovered him much later. I sometimes wonder what effect The Game of Kings would have had on me if I'd read it on first publication in 1961 instead of ten years later!

As it was, both heroes came into the mix when I wrote my first book, which eventually became An Arranged Marriage. I'm sure someone could write a thesis on writer psychology based on our first heroes and heroines, but they'd have to peel back some layers, as An Arranged Marriage was my sixth published book.  

Patricia Rice:

I am so terribly clichéd! My first swoon-worthy book hero was Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. You have to understand that I was only nine and had never read a romance book, so perhaps I can be excused. I promptly followed P & P with Jane Eyre and utterly adored the indomitable Jane but never fell in love with Rochester. I liked the brooding dark looks but thought he was an inexcusable jerk.

And like Jo, I have to wonder about the psychology of our choices. I have always preferred beta heroes to alphas. While I loved Percy in The Scarlet Pimpernel, I preferred rougher guys like the cowboys in Zane Grey (or James Garner in Maverick, if we can veer from books!).  Darcy may have been elegant, but socially, he had this appealing introversion happening that worked for a bookworm like me.

I wonder what it is inside us that chooses our heroes?

Joanna Bourne:

I loved Rudyard Kipling's Kim. He was a boy in the book and I wasn't any older when I first read him. Does it count as a bookcrush if you're both twelve? I think SO. I loved Kim's cheerful courage. Loved the way he slipped through the exotic world of India, blending into the crowds, playing many roles, clear-eyed, cheeky, resilient. So wise for his age -- for any age, really. Loved the way he became a
spy. Loved the way he traveled from one life to another.

Who else?  Willie Garvin. He's the sidekick and male protagonist of Peter O'Donnel's Modesty Blaise series. Massive, muscled and strong, blond, the imperturbable, Cockney-speaking expert with a throwing knife. 

And JimGrim from Talbot Mundy. He's another tough, fiercely competent, adamantly principled adventurer. He leads a band of like-minded men and women on adventures through exotic lands.

I think I'm giving away a bit about where my writing comes from ...

Wedding Dresses, part 2

Anne here.

I'm continuing the topic of the wedding dress exhibition that was on recently at RipponLea, a National Trust house and garden in Melbourne, Australia. The first part of the blog is here.

On the right is my favorite of all the dresses, a gracefully falling peau de soie silk dress embroidered with beads and diamentes and worn by a Melbourne bride, Jeannie Corlett in 1957.

On the left is my second favorite, a beautifully draped dress that almost looks like a modern day lingerie set. It's a gorgeous silk satin, tulle, chiffon and lace dress that was worn by Nancy Sargood on her wedding day in 1915. (Click on any of the pictures for a larger view.)

Joan Wolf, here at Word Wenches

Joanna here, interviewing Joan Wolf, who writes such wonderful Historical Romances.  The Guradian, The Arrangement, A London Season, Double Deception are just a few of my favories.

A little history . . .  Joan Wolf grew up in the Bronx, New York and took her Master's Degree in English and Comparative Literature from Hunter College. She taught high school English for nine years in New York City, including Creative Writing.  Valuable for her future writing no doubt.

So hello, Joan.  Pull up a chair and let me ask you some questions about your books.  For instance, 

You've written books set in a number of time periods -- Regency, Biblical, Dark Ages, Medieval, Prehistoric, Contemporary.Can you tell us a little of how you build that 'sense of the past' into your stories?  

Research, research, research.  Of course, some periods are easier to research than others.  The regency is easy.  Even medieval times are fairly easy.  The Dark Ages?  Well, they weren’t called the dark ages for nothing.  Very little is written about the centuries (5^th – 9^th)  where I set my trilogy: The Road to Avalon, Born of the Sun, and The Edge of Light.  I read the literature we have from that time – Beowulf and those wonderful Anglo-Saxon poems.  And The Anglo Saxon Chronicle has a list of dates that were useful, but that’s about it.  There was even less for the pre-history series, Daughter of the Red Deer, The Horsemasters and The Reindeer Hunters.  I spent a lot of time in the Yale library reading about primitive people and how they lived, plus there was some good information about the tools used by Cro-Magnon man.  The rest came from my imagination.

That all-important writer's imagination. Sometimes it sees further than the facts.

Okay --  I know you're a horse person and horses appear in many of your books. Do you have a favorite horse you've known and loved?

Covers

Hi, Jo here. I've been thinking about book covers a lot recently, for a range of reasons. Covers are important, because they do affect our purchasing of books, but also sometimes our relationship with a book. The cover can form part of our expectation, and continue to influence us as we read. Of course with e-books covers can have less influence as generally once we start to read we'll never see the cover again.

But let's think of dramatic examples. I love Terry Pratchett's work, and I'm sure it would always have found its huge readership, but would it have become popular so quickly without the brilliant cartoonish covers?

Typepad is doing odd things with images, which is a shame when I'm doing an image-based blog. Onward! With apologies.

To look at historical romance, there was a time a while back when covers for humorous ones had a cartoony or cut paper cover, which was very effective at telling readers what to expect, especially as most of us like humor. I'm not sure why they didn't last long.

The look continues in Britain, especially for Julian Quinn, who of course often includes light humor in her books.

Uniformly Magnificent!

Cara/Andrea here,
In historical romance, most of us authors love swathing our heroines in silks and satins. We pore over vintage prints from La Belle Assemblee, studying sleeve shapes, sashes, bodices and furbelows. We peer at the tiny details like buttons and ribbons, sarcenet and lace,  gold-threaded embroidery and delicate seed pearls. Then, of course, there are bonnets, reticles and pelisses . . .

The details add wonderful color and texture to our characters. Which got me to thinking about our heroes. They tend to be more understated—biscuit-colored breeches, navy superfine coats, snowy white cravats, dark Hessians, polished to a mirror shine . . . Unless, they are military men.

For a just-finished manuscript, I was looking at the Sir Thomas Lawrence paintings of Wellington and Charles Stewart, and taking careful note of the glorious finery of the fancy dress officers. Gold braid, epaulettes, crested buttons, starburst medals and intricate patches fashioned out of precious metals and gems—some of the regalia puts the most elaborate ballgowns to blush. Which got me to thinking about uniforms, and a bit of research turned up the sort of obscure and fun facts that always tickle my fancy.

The Romance of Spices Revisited

By Mary Jo

I'm in the crazed mode of finishing a book, so I'm invoking Wench Privilege by re-running an old blog, this one about the spice trade.  What gave me the idea was going out to my car after exercising at Curves, and smelling something sweet and tangy from the McCormick spice company headquarters about three miles to the north.  Inspiring!

++++Originally published August 3, 2007++++++

I’m sitting on my screened porch on  a summer morning, sipping coffee, watching birds, and enjoying the scent of pepper that floats through the summer air. This is unusual—more often, I would smell allspice, which carries well. 

No, I am not imaging the tantalizing fragrance in the air, despite having an over-active writer’s imagination.  The world’s largest spice company, McCormick’s, is headquartered a few miles north of my house.  My hometown of Baltimore has been one of America’s most important ports since its founding, so it’s not surprising that the city is home to several spice companies

Spices are something we take for granted, like being able to listen to music whenever we want.  We can stop in the baking aisle of any supermarket and have our choice of dozens of spices and herbs.  But once the spice trade was the most lucrative, and perhaps dangerous, in the world.  In many ways, spices are responsible for discovering the world we know.