Word Wenches

What We're reading — November

Anne here, hosting our monthly feature "What We're Reading"

We'll start with Jo Beverley, who says: I recently dived into my keeper shelves, and I've been re-reading Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles. I used to read the whole series frequently, but I haven't for a while now and I decided it was time. Six big books and not as much reading time as I used to have, but I'm enjoying them tremendously.

For those who don't know them, they're based around a central character, Francis Crawford of Lymond, a Scotsman whose adventures we follow around Europe and up into Russia in the mid-16th century. The books are about him, but stretches are about other important characters and from other points of view and the plots involve most of the significant historical characters and events. The Tudors, the de Guise, Ivan the Terrible, Suleiman the Magnificent, Nostrodamus!

Despite being all about him, we're only in his point of view once, so our picture of him comes through the view of others, which I think is key to the fascination Lymond holds for many. We have to learn him as we learn people in real life -- from the outside.  I'm not aware of anyone else having written about a  series character in that way and it was daring for sure back in the '60s.

Thanksgiving

Hi, Jo here doing a brief post at this time, when many Americans are celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday. It's a pleasant idea for us all to be thankful for blessings great and small, no matter where we live. I'm a believer in noticing things that make us smile day by day, because it's easy to begin to take them for granted. We might smile at a neighbour, the light reflecting on a window, a cute display in  shop, a very satisfying cup of tea -- or some days we might enjoy a delightful surprise.

So please, share something that made you smile in the last 24 hours, ordinary or unexpected.

I'll share two things. (I wrote this on Tuesday evening.) One is my salt lamp. It's a cold day here for Devon and the night comes early and I switched it on for its warm, golden glow. They're supposed to give off negative ions, which are the good ones, and perhaps they do, but I love that glow. 

The other pleasure is a book called Mrs. Hurst Dancing, which is a collection of pictures drawn in the early 19th century by a young lady showing the everyday life of a gentry family in the countryside. I pulled it off the shelf because I remembered it had an illustration of the family enjoying an electricy machine and I wanted to remind myself of how they were doing it.

 

 You'll see that they're holding hands while a man fiddles with the machine. It says, "Henry Van electrifying Mrs. Van, Diana, Henry, and Isabella -- Mum and HGS." It doesn't matter about the full names, but I note that electrifying is already in use, and she calls her mother Mum, as many do today.

 

 Then, of course, I spent a pleasant hour going through the pictures. There are days out, walking or riding -- and the ladies ride on donkeys, not horses; alarming moments when out in a carriage; and a rather precarious clearing of flies off a window. 

"Mrs. Sperling murdering flies, assisted by her maid, who receives the dead and wounded." It doesn't say how they stayed up there! 

You can find more pictures on the web, and the book is available, used at least.

So now,  please share "a smile of the day", and if you're celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow, I hope it involves many smiles.

And always remember that the simple act of smiling sends makes us feel happier (it's true!), and creates happiness around us, so whatever's around you at the moment, smile. :)

Jo

O, Canada! A cruise to the north country fair

by Mary Jo

Relaxing on a cruise is a good way to recover from deadline craziness.  It's also good at providing a real drop-dead date because who wants to go on vacation with an unfinished book hanging over one's head like the Sword of Damocles?  

So I sent Not Always a Saint off to my editor at 1:30 am of the day we left for a cruise of Canadian Maritime provinces and Quebec.  (What can I say?  My Muse likes to live dangerously, alas.)

Eastern Canada has a very long history of settlement by the French and British, and the provinces are as richly individual as the American colonies.  Just as no one would confuse the Massachusetts Bay Colony with Georgia, Quebec and Prince Edward Island are very, very different.  The Maritimes were thriving long before there was a Dominion of Canada.

"Maritime" means 'of the sea,' and the three Canadian Maritime provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island are very oriented to the sea, with gorgeous views, lighthouses, and fishing villages.In the map on the left, New Brunswick is green, Prince Edward Island is red, and Nova Scotia is blue. (Map courtesy of Wikipedia.)

The Romance of Christmas

'Tis the season, and though Charlie and Billy aren't yet in their Christmas clothes this year, I found myself thinking about the appeal of Christmas romances. I hope you don't groan that it's too early, but they're already hitting the bestseller lists. No other genre creates as many Christmas themed stories. That's my observation, at least. Am I wrong? I think it's because Christmas and romance are so in tune.

I'm not talking about the religious festival, but the social celebration, which is often shared by non-Christians and atheists. It's not an unsullied celebration. Some of us aren't happy with the commercialism, and the whole business of sending cards and buying presents can become a burden. Often on the women of the family, yes? The family gatherings can highlight stresses and open old wounds, or at the least oblige people to behave well around people they don't like. I don't think that's a bad thing. It's the sort of behaviour that keeps the world together.

It's a peak time for suicide, however, especially for the outcasts and lonely, for whom the hype about happy families becomes unbearable. 

However, for many of us it is an uplifting time, and romances seem to fit with it.

Creativity with Historical Details

I’m at that stage of a book when I’m playing with characters, plot ideas, and digging into history for the mortar that holds historical romance together. And no, I don’t do wallpaper paste.

I realize readers often complain that historical romance has been reduced to costume dressing and wallpaper setting. I assume there must be some truth to that, but in the books I read, research surfaces in the details that readers might overlook or dismiss as fictional.

Just for one small example—Amanda Quick’s most recent historical Otherwise Engaged in which the heroine uses a Japanese tessen. How many of you had ever heard of a war fan before you read that book (or this blog)? 

Elizabeth David — food writer extraordinaire

Anne here, still thinking about food in books.
There's a very funny scene in a P.G.Wodehouse story, Something New, where the young hero, Ashe, has been hired supposedly as valet, by Mr Peters, an overweight, dyspeptic, cigar-smoking, insomniac millionaire. For his health Mr Peters has been placed on a diet of "seeds and grasses" by his fashionable doctor. In order to help his employer get to sleep, Ashe reads to him from Peters' favorite bedtime reading book . . .

Ashe said, "Lie back and make yourself comfortable and I'll read you to sleep first."
"You're a good boy," said Mr Peters drowsily.
"Are you ready? 'Pork Tenderloin Larded. Half pound fat pork—"
A faint smile curved Mr Peters' lips. His eyes were closed and he breathed softly.
Ashe went on in a low voice: "four large pork tenderloins, one cupful cracker crumbs, one cupful boiling water, two tablespoons butter, one teaspoon salt, half teaspoon pepper, one teaspoon poultry seasoning."
A little sigh came from the bed.

The scene made me chuckle, but it also made me think that if I were to be read to from a recipe book, my absolute first choice would be the books of Elizabeth David — not just for the recipes, but for the beautiful prose, the evocative images, the absorbing discussions of various methods of cooking, and the delightful food-related anecdotes she includes in her books.

“To eat figs off the tree in the very early morning, when they have been barely touched by the sun, is one of the exquisite pleasures of the Mediterranean.” ― from An Omelette and a Glass of Wine

Howdy from the snow-dusted mountain of Joanna.
The Ask A Wench question for November is:

"If you were writing a Historical Romance set in an unusual place and time -- and you didn't have to worry about sales -- where would you choose and when and why?"

 

Mary Jo has not only thought of writing about some of these exotic places. She's done it.

 As a kid in the classroom, I used to gaze at the map racks hanging from the blackboard, and I was particularly interested in the vast, empty tracts of Central Asia.  What was there?  How interesting it would be to visit!  So when I started to write, I thought it would be really cool to write a book set in Central Asia.

Oh, wait!  I did.  The book is called Silk and Secrets, and it was loosely based on a real rescue mission to Bokhara in the 1840s by Dr. Joseph Wolff, an eccentric Anglican missionary.  Wonderful material in his memoirs.  The last in that trilogy, Veils of Silk, was set in India, with adventure and mystery and romance.  But India isn't quite so far off the beaten path, historical romance wise.

Well, China could be interesting.  So very different from Western Europe, with an ancient civilization and an aura of mystery. Err…, I wrote that in The China Bride,  with a Chinese/Scottish heroine and an English hero with an explorer's heart. 

Talking Tudor Fiction with Suzannah Dunn

Nicola here. Today I have the very great pleasure of welcoming best-selling British historical author Suzannah Dunn to the Word Wenches. I first came across Suzannah’s books when she was writing contemporary novels and she became an auto-buy for me. When I discovered that she had turned to writing Tudor-set historical fiction I was very happy indeed! The May Bride is her new book and tells the story of Jane Seymour and Jane's friendship with her dazzling sister-in-law Katherine Filliol. It’s a multi-faceted book with mystery, history, romance, intrigue and family relationships intermingled in a fascinating whole.

Suzannah, welcome to the Word Wenches! The May Bride has Jane Seymour as its narrator but it is as much the story of Jane’s sister-in-law Katherine Filliol as it is of Jane. How did you come across Katherine Filliol’s story? Why did it appeal to you?

I can't remember when I first came across it - it seems always to have been there, off to one side but
sort of disappearing whenever I turned to try to look at it, if you know what I mean.  It was never - anywhere - more than a mention, more than a footnote.  And that fascinated me.  Because how could something so big, as it were, have almost disappeared?  Edward Seymour was - became - a Big Tudor, he was Lord Protector for several years of the boy-king Edward V1's reign: ie effectively, he ruled England for those years  (which were years of great change, years which made much of the England that we recognise today).  How did he come to have such a hideous scandal in his private life - and by the way, he was such an unlikely person to have had a hideous scandal in his private life, which also fascinated me - and we know next to nothing about it? (Answer:  Edward was nothing if not efficient, and he was very efficient in keeping this under wraps...)

 

The Monthly

Way back 8 years ago -- that seems way back to me. We're talking pre-Kindle. Pause to think. Anyway, way back then I answered a reader question, which led to a blog about menstruation in the past. I thought it worth repeating.

The original question was: "Why don't women in historicals get PMS and chew holes in everyone around them?" Here's what I wrote, somewhat updated.

My first response is that mine rarely do because I rarely did. I'm one of those annoying women who had very little problem with menstruation other than the general hassle of it. No particular mood changes, no cramps. We write what we know. 

It would be interesting to know how many women regularly have PMS today, and even more interesting to know how common it was in the past.

Christmas Revels!

by Mary Jo

"Revel" derives from a Middle English word that means "celebrate," and it always sounds happy to me.  That's why I chose the name Christmas Revels years ago for a print collection of five of my holiday novellas.  All of those stories have been released in different e-versions in recent years, but now, for the first time, I'm collecting those original five back into an e-book version of Christmas Revels.  

The title had been in my mind for years, ever since we visited my sister and her husband in Boston one holiday season, and she took us to the Christmas Revels, a delightful sort of medieval variety show inspired by historic mummer plays.  The performance was held in a theater on the Harvard campus, I think, and was loosely structured around the old tale of Gawain and the Green Knight.  Lots of music, dancing, and hammy comic acting.  

Plots from the Past, Written for the Present

Cara/Andrea here,
The leaves may be falling as we in the higher latitudes of the Northern hemisphere head into the dead of winter, but here at the Wenches, new books are blooming by the pageful in November to brighten the season. On Monday, we kicked off the month with Joanna’s new release, Rogue Spy, and today I’m here to trumpet the news that I have a pair of new e-books available.

Now, we all usually blog about some historical subject or arcane bit of fun research we’ve uncovered, and keep promotion about our books to a discreet minimum. But as I got to thinking about it, I realized I could do a little of both. One of the reasons I love writing in the Regency period is because the possibilities are almost endless in crafting interesting, offbeat characters and plots, while still staying true to the temper of the times.

Joanna Bourne talks about ROGUE SPY!

by Mary Jo

MJP: Word Wench Joanna Bourne's long-awaited new book, Rogue Spy, will be released tomorrow! Her last book, Black Hawk, won RWA's RITA for best historical romance of the year, and Rogue Spy was named to Library Journal's list of the 10 Best Romances of the year even before it was released.

So--Joanna, could you tell us about the story and the characters?  I loved not only the protagonists, but all the delightful, kindly criminal elders, such as the Fluffy Aunts.  <G>

 JB: I'm writing a love story, of course, so the emotional mainspring of Rogue Spy is the relationship between Pax and Cami. They reach out to each other. They heal each other's wounds. They fall in love.

They also unravel a a spy plot, chase the bad guy, (very bad, bad guy,) across London. and in the end avert death, disaster, and international chaos.

The usual, y'know.

 But the book is also about family. The family we're born with. The one we choose.

 That 'family' theme lets me bring in some of the wise elder characters I so enjoy writing. The Fluffy Aunts, who are only as dithery and harmless as they choose to appear. Galba, trying to manage his British Service agents. This is like herding cats, except it's cats who kill people. Bernardo Baldoni, spy lord, power broker, con man, and political plotter. His Medici ancestors would have been proud.