Word Wenches

Anne Gracie and a Sparkling Spring Bride

by Mary Jo

Due to stealth and cunning, I was able to acquire an early copy of Word Wench Anne Gracie's The Spring Bride, third in her Chance Sisters series.  I volunteered to interview her about the book, which gives me an opportunity to gush about it.  <G>

I love the Chance Sisters, and I'm not alone in that. The first book, The Autumn Bride, made several "best of the year" lists including Library Journal and NPR, and was also a RITA finalist.  The Winter Bride received several starred reviews, an RT top pick, and was voted Favourite Historical by members of the Australian Romance readers Association. The Spring Bride received 4 1/2 stars from Romantic Times, and I think it may be the best Chance sister book yet.

MJP: Anne, could you tell us how the Chance Sisters came to be?   

What We Are Reading

Cara/ Andrea here, It’s time for our monthly What We Are Reading post, and it seems as the new season gets ready to kick in (beach reads here in the northern hemisphere, while Down Under it’s curling up under a woolly blanket), we’ve all been exploring outside our usual genres—so be prepared for some different types of recommendations! (Both Jo and Nicola have been enjoying some traveling, so they promise to report on all the books that were tucked in their suitcases next month.)

Mary Jo: Something a little different this time!  Among the Hugo nominees for the best science fiction or fantasy novel of 2014 is a book called The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison, whom I've never heard of.  (I later learned it's a pseudonym for Sarah Monette, whom I have heard of but haven't read.)
 

The Author Photo

Anne here, gearing up for the promo as my book, The Spring Bride finally goes on sale. Some authors adore the whirlwind of promo, the blitzing of social media channels, the public "look-at-me-and-buy-my-book." The rest of us go there reluctantly, channeling Lady Macbeth and muttering, "Screw your courage to the sticking point and we'll not fail."

I'm in the latter group. I do my best to embrace the world of social media, and most of the time I enjoy it. Not when it comes to telling everyone to to buy my book, though.  My natural tendency is to do that from the bottom of a deep well, with a blanket over my head and wearing a gag. A  natural salesperson I am not. And I know I'm not alone in that.

Mary Jo once told me writers' conferences are full of introverts pretending to be extroverts. Many writers on social media are much the same. It's a bit easier, because you can do it from the comfort of your cave, hiding behind the computer screen, doing what you do every day anyway, creating a world and characters — only the character you're bringing to life is you. Authorly you — the one who is interesting and glamorous and lives a fantastically exciting life. Not the one who lives in track pants and trainers, who never goes anywhere because, well, that's how you write books, dammit! 

But it seems people —publishers — expect you to project some kind of image. And to this end, they require you to provide — horror of horrors!— an Author Photo!

One Man's Legacy

Nicola here, talking today about the influence of Dr John Radcliffe on the beautiful city of Oxford. I’m fortunate enough to live only 20 miles from the “City of the dreaming spires” and I visit it as often as I can. The sense of history in Oxford is all pervasive and very inspiring and last month I had an extra-special treat; a tour of two of Oxford’s most iconic buildings, The Radcliffe Infirmary and the Radcliffe Observatory.

Dr John Radcliffe was an English physician, politician and academic. He was born in 1652 in Yorkshire and educated at Oxford University from the age of 13. He rose to become court physician to William and Mary and is buried in Oxford. When he died he left £40k in his will, which was used to endow a library and other academic projects in the city. Amongst the buildings constructed with funds from his estate was a new quadrangle for University College, and also the Radcliffe Camera, which housed the university’s science library.

The ninth, part deux!

Aren't we having fun with our ninth anniversary? Here are some more Wenchly first books. By chance the Friday post is Jo, Jo, Jo -- and Anne. So we have Joanna Bourne, Mary Jo Putney, me and Anne Gracie talking about our first published book. As on Wednesday, you still has a chance to win our anniversary prize.

It's simple. You'll get a ticket in the Rafflecopter hat for every option you click on below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

On to first books.

Joanna Bourne.

My first book -- it was the first fiction I'd written since short stories for Middle School English class -- came about for one of the usual reasons.

I was staying at home with my first child. I was going squirrelly. One day I put down a book I was reading (which I did not wallbang only because ... sleeping child,) and I said, "Heck. even I can write better than that," as who among us has not.

Happy Ninth Anniversary to Us!

Celebrate! Our Word Wenches blog is NINE years old this week!

In blog years, that’s … well, since May 22, 2006, we’ve written nearly 1500 blogs, if you do a little math (and we prefer to do only a little math). Consider us wise and Wenchly after all those years and blogs, and very pleased to still be blogging strong. We’re especially pleased and very grateful that you, our blog readers and friends, have been so loyal and such fun over the years!

We’re celebrating with virtual cake and candles, balloons and prezzies – in the form of a great giveaway contest that you can all enter (see details below)! We’re also celebrating with a look back at our very first books – the book that started it all for each of us, taking us by different paths to the Land of Word Wenches, where we indulged our mutual love of history and historical fiction—and found that one of the secrets to a long-lived blog is friendship (along with the ability to go with the flow and be real chill about details, and we’re all pretty good at that)! 

Here’s a look at the first books we ever wrote – Part One.
Look for Part Two of our Anniversary Celebration on Friday!

Patricia Rice 

The book that set me on the path to Wenchland was originally called Love’s First Surrender, published by Kensington in 1984. I had just graduated with an accounting degree, was living in a small town that wasn’t fond of the idea of female accountants, and for the first time since I was fourteen, I wasn’t working or going to school or both. I had time to watch my toddler race around the driveway on his Big Wheel, but I was bored out of my skull. I like working. I couldn’t afford to buy books, so I wrote my own. I wrote several, actually, but Surrender is the one I deliberately tried to write to fit the sexy historical romance market of the time. I’d never had a writing class, didn’t know RWA existed, had no notion of how to get published except from Writer’s Digest. But I figured I had to do something to make money if I couldn’t find a job, so I dedicated toddler nap times to writing a sexy historical in long hand in a Walmart notebook. Once I had a complete draft, I bought a used Underwood typewriter and typed it all up. Those were the days of carbon copies, white-out, and boxing 500 pages to ship via snail mail with SASEs inside. I quickly learned to just send the first fifty pages!

And lo and behold, I got The Call the same week I was hired by two Baptist deacons as an accountant. Sometimes, we get what we wish for—and it only makes life more complicated!

Time for the Scones!

by Mary Jo

Several weeks ago, I set out to write about clotted cream and scones, and it rapidly ballooned into such a massive amount of material that I decided to do two posts, one on clotted cream and one on scones.  (Anne Gracie has already blogged on the general subject of afternoon tea.) 

And it's still a massive amount of material!  In our private Wench discussion loop, we ran wild, and given that the Wenches come from the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia, the range of experience--and opinions!--is vast.

 

The Changing World of Publishing

Anne here. When I was trying to decide what to blog about today, I glanced through the list of topics sent in by wenchly readers over the years, looking right back to the earliest of those lists. So many of those early questions were from aspiring authors asking about the publishing process, how to get an agent, tips for catching an editor's eye, which conferences were you most likely to meet good editors —and many more.

Those were the days of relative certainty — there was a process for getting published, a clear pathway, with steps. Now there are so many ways to get published that the difficulty is in choosing which one to take -- to seek traditional publishing, or to go with a small digital-first press (many of which are unproven) or to self-publish.

There's no longer the hierarchy there was: many major traditional bestsellers are also self-publishing and publishing through small e-presses — witness the wenches.

And there are no experts: what works for one writer might prove a dismal failure for another. Trickier still, what works well for the first book by an author might not work for the second or third. So many writers I know are trying everything, flinging all kinds of books — like literary spaghetti thrown at various walls, to see what sticks.

It's just as tricky for readers, I suspect.

AAW—Where Have All the Dark Historical Romances Gone?

Pat here with another question from our Wench mailbox

 Francie Stark wins a free copy of one of my books by asking:

“Dear Word Wenches, can you tell me the difference between 90's historical romance novels and 21st century historical romance novels. I've been snooping around and reading comments from books clubs and this is a hot topic. I've been out of the business for 20 years--not that I ever had much more than my toe in it. Honestly, I lost heart for writing and even reading historical romance so I'm really in the dark. I did pick-up a book by one of the reigning queens of the genre and I tried to read it, but it was so pink and fluffy. No meat. I couldn't stay with it. I've been sitting in the middle of the second draft of a novel for ten years and it will not leave me alone. It's like a dragon egg I pick-up and stare at, knowing that I must build a pyre and take it into the fire before it will hatch--or not. Maybe it doesn't need to be hatched. Based on what I've read it's very 90's. But I write the way I write and my stories aren't pink of fluffy. What to do, what to so... Any comments would be appreciated.”

 

Is X-Rated Over-Rated?

Are you tired of sex?
Ummm, wait— that didn’t come out quite right! Allow me to start over . . .

Cara/Andrea here, and what I meant to ask is, are you growing a little tired of all the sex scenes in romance novels these days? I’ve recently been seeing a number of reader comments on various online forums saying that all the gymnastics are becoming  . . . boring. The complaint seems to stem from the perception that too many books appear to be simply stringing together a number of hot bed scenes with little attention paid to characterization or story plot.

The Whole Tooth and Nothing But the Tooth

In 1787, this painting made a sensation. She's Showing her Teeth

Joanna here. I've posted before with all my thoughts and beliefs and outright speculation that Regency folk of the middling and upper sorts were probably as cleanly and nice smelling as most folks nowadays. That is not an impeccable standard, as anyone who takes public transportation will testify. But it's also not the universal reek-to-heaven some folks think it must be.

So let's wander into the question of oral hygiene, shall we?
(And I promise not to go into anything even vaguely touching upon tooth-ache and tooth-drawers and suchlike horrors because some of you are sitting down with a nice croissant and café au lait and you do not deserve to be harrowed to your marrow.)

What did Regency folk use as toothbrushes?
Well ... They used toothbrushes.

Taking into account the sad fact that our Regency folk didn't have plastic and were therefore unable to make their dental implements in screaming magenta and electric green stripes, they still did pretty well. The business end of the toothbrush was of stiff boar bristles or —  like this one over on the right  —  horsehair. The handles were ivory, wood, or bone, carved for a firm yet graceful grip.

This belonged to Napoleon. Could be gold, I suppose

 

Telling Stories Through Tapestry

Nicola here. Today I’m talking about telling stories through tapestries as last weekend I went to the unveiling of our wonderful Parish Textile Map. I love story telling in all its shapes and forms, whether it is through words, paintings, music or any other medium and ever since I was a small child on a trip to France and saw the Bayeux Tapestry I have been entranced by the way that people used textiles as a way of telling a story.

Most historic tapestries were luxury items, created in specialist workshops and used for both decoration and warmth. The first tapestries were entirely hand made although with the introduction of a new type of loom in the 14^th century, tapestries became more common. Often they were produced for the nobility to commemorate an event or tell a particular myth or story.

Royal succession

Jo here. With a royal birth in the news, I thought I'd give a brief run down of the situation in late 1817 when there was a royal succession crisis because of a birth that did not go well.

I write my Company of Rogues books along a time line that started in 1814, and though I've gone slowly I've arrived at the great tragedy of the death of Princess Charlotte in childbirth in November 1817. It can hardly be ignored, so it forms part of the plot of next year's book, The Viscount Needs a Wife.

People sometimes think that death in childbirth was common in the past. It was more common than now, but not so much so that the death of a young, healthy woman and her baby was taken in stride. The nation was plunged into a genuine and almost manic mourning that continued well into the next year. Court mourning plunged the aristocracy into black, and nearly everyone wore sober colors, black arm bands and similar signs of grief. There were many ramifications, but I'll save those for another post.

In addition to a human tragedy, Charlotte's death created a succession crisis.