Word Wenches

What We're Reading in January

Susan here, on the last day of January 2018 (already!), bringing  you our WWR (What We're Reading) post. Contemporary, historical romance, a treasure trove of mysteries, an English king and a Renaissance giant -- the Wenches have discovered some truly great reads this month! 

Pat says -- 

I still can’t tell if I enjoyed THE ART OF CRASH LANDING by Melissa DeCarlo or was just seriously annoyed with it—which means I really got into it and lived with it, which doesn’t happen often anymore. The protagonist is a hot mess. Her mother was worse. Her life’s screwed up, and then her grandmother dies and she runs off to see if she inherited anything--before even calling the lawyer. She continues to recklessly fling herself into life, other people’s lives, future lives, but with each futile leap, she learns a little more. The reader gets to watch as she opens up, just a little, to the possibility that there are other lives out there besides hers, that they’re as seriously messed up as she is, and maybe, just maybe, she might fix one small thing here and there. There’s a touch of romance, but mostly, this is a woman learning how to live and face the future instead of wallowing in guilt and self-loathing. I don’t think I’d like this woman if I met her, but she’s someone I wouldn’t hate by the end. If I made you curious, try it!

Mary Jo -- 

I've read several good books recently, but for the now, I'll just tell you about Emily Larkin's Trusting Miss Trentham -- #3 in the Baleful Godmother historical series, it features Letty Trentham, a plain woman who is the greatest heiress in England, and has been gifted with the ability to tell truth from lies every time.  Since she's an heiress, this is useful--she's turned down almost 200 proposals because no matter what they say, she knows they're lying and only interested in her fortune.

Then one night at a ball, after she's turned down one proposal, she's approached by gaunt, haunted Major Icarus Reid, recently out of the army, and needing her help to find which of two English officers betrayed secret information that led to the French ambushing Reid's scouting party in Portugal.  Four young men died, and Reid was broken in deep emotional ways.  He wants to see justice done so he can die in peace, and he needs Letty's help to find the liar.

Letty weighs the cost to her reputation against the lives of four men who were needlessly slaughtered, and says yes. This leads the two of them on a colorful journey across country, and a relationship that develops in unusual and fascinating ways.  Well worth reading! 

 

Foyled Again!

Andrea/Cara here, confessing to having felt a little blue-deviled last night as I finished streaming an episode Foyle’s War and realized that I’ve almost come to the end of the show’s eight seasons. Now, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the series, it’s a BBC period police procedural set in a coastal English village during WWII, and deals with the drama of ordinary people coping in a world of conflict and change

The mysteries deal with wartime issues—profiteering, pacifism, cowardice, among others—and the plots are vey well done. But to me the real appeal of the show is the subtle and layered characterizations and the exploration of human nature. Friendship, loyalty, love—all elemental themes that transcend any specific era. I’ve learned a lot about storytelling from the episodes, and I shall miss seeing my “friends” continue to grow and develop.

The Gamble

Anne here, and today I'm thinking about the kind of story we tend to think of as "historical" — women traveling long distances, often alone, to make a new life.
In romance fiction it's the classic "mail-order-bride" story (which I admit I'm a sucker for), usually a Western historical, but one we assume is more or less in the past. 

But it's not, and I was reminded of that recently when I attended the funeral of a friend's mother and was thinking about her story. But first, a little about the painting above. It's called Coming South, and it was painted in 1886 by Tom Roberts, one of Australia's early beloved painters. He painted many paintings that explored the themes of those times, and this one is no exception.

Coming South is about migrating to Australia, 'Terra Australis Incognita' as it was known on the earliest maps, the great unknown south land on the other side of the world. And truly, the people coming here had little idea of what their life would be like. (I blogged some time ago about the courage of migration.)

But the painting could just as easily be about sailing in to New York Harbour, or traveling to Canada or New Zealand — or, with a change of transport, traveling in a wagon across to the west of America.  Migration is an act of bravery — or desperation. And for women, who in the past (and perhaps even now) were more vulnerable, and had fewer legal rights, it was an even greater challenge. (The picture above right refers to Jewish mail order brides in the American west)

All the Ships at Sea...

 Photo above by Beth Miller

by Mary Jo

It is not news that Britain is an island. Not just an island, but part of an archipelago, a wide flung collection of islands including Ireland, the Hebrides that are the wild western fringe of Scotland, Shetland and Orkney away to the north, the Scilly Isles scattered southwest from Cornwall, the yachting Isle of Wight to the south, and many more: there are two major islands, Great Britain and Ireland, some middling sized ones, and over 6000 smaller ones, some not much larger than rocks, but still… (Photo at left from Wikipedia by Jeff Schmaltz, Modis/NASA.)

 

Remembering Katy

Katy, in the studios at Audible

This month, I lost a friend I’d never met.

Katherine Kellgren, the gifted, award-winning narrator who gave life to several of my novels as audiobooks, was taken by cancer on January 10.

Several years ago, Katy was interviewed here at the Word Wenches, by Nicola, and in 2013 I did something similar at my own blog. This is what I wrote about Katy then, when I was talking about all the headaches I caused my audiobook narrators:

Erotic Books of the Regency

Joanna here, taking about dirty books available in the Regency because some of you have gray weather outside and you may need cheering up.

What it is ... I’m going to argue that our rakish heroes would have read erotic books. It’s human. It’s manly. It would help make them good lovers.

A hero reading

 

I think some of my favorite Regency heroines did the reading, too.

Perhaps not my own characters, who seem to have tough childhoods for some reason,
but those dashing, brave and wise women who live on my Keeper Shelf. I think they read erotic books.

I see a heroine at ten or twelve, creeping into the library and sneaking a peek at the Song of Songs. They’ve heard about it . . . Maybe it’s the heroine and a few choice friends. Maybe they’re giggling. Maybe just puzzled.

I picture them reading,

“I am my beloved's, and his desire is toward me.
Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field;
let us lodge in the villages.
Let us get up early to the vineyards;
let us see if the vine flourish, whether the tender grape appear, and the pomegranates bud forth:
there will I give thee my love.”

The heroine looks over at Sukey the maid and Jenny who lives in the house next door and says plaintively, “But what does that mean?”

“It’s symbolic,” Jenny says.

“Oh.”

The Magic of History

Andrea/Cara here, thinking about how delightfully magical it is when actual history confirms an author’s fanciful imagination! See this amazing artifact—I will explain in a moment. But first, a brief preface . . .

Although I write fiction, and am allowed to take artistic license and make things up when my plot requires it, I feel very strongly about creating an accurate Regency world for my make-believe characters. I try to get all the little details right, from manners and titles, to fashion and food, and all the other elements of daily life. And when actual events are part of the story, I do a lot of background reading to make sure I stick to the facts. (Granted within those events, I let my characters create their own reality.)

Ask A Wench - Which Movie Character Would You Like to Be?

Nicola here with this month's Ask A Wench. For our question this month we’re trying to decide which movie character we would like to be. When we discussed this amongst ourselves this raised some interesting questions. Would we go all out in pursuit of adventure or would we prefer something more reflective of our own lives? What makes a super-hero(ine)? What qualities do we admire and would like to possess, on screen or in real life or both? The Wench thoughts on this are below. But what would your dream movie role be?

For me this is a difficult choice. My first inclination would be to take the part of a historical character such as Elizabeth I or Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion In Winter. However since I’d be playing the role and not the actual historical character this would probably be frustrating because I’d want to depict them as I see them, not as the part was written. I’m going for Yoda for two reasons. Firstly I love the way he constructs his sentences. He always gets his point across yet sounds poetic at the same time. Also, he is measured and wise and as I get older I value wisdom very highly and I would like to be more measured in my response to things sometimes. Yoda combines all this with agility, courage and skill with a lightsaber, plus he is keen on encouraging the younger generation to achieve their full potential – quite a role model.

Mary Jo: What movie character would I be?  Well, since Nicola has dibs on Yoda, I think I'll go for Wonder Woman.  Not just any of the decades-long evolving version of the character, but specifically the current manifestation as played by Gad Godot. 

I admit that I'm blending both role and actor together.  Israeli Gal Godot was not only Miss Israel 2004, but during her tenure in the Israeli Defense Forces, she was a combat instructor.  She said the military was learning about discipline and respect--and aren't they great traits to have?  Her Wonder Woman is powerful as well as beautiful, both idealistic and wise.  Gad Godot has also studied law and international relations. What a role model!

But give me half a chance and I might choose go for Princess Leia.  In the original Star Wars
movie, she shows up as a gravel-voiced rebel leader, kicking ass and taking names and far more competent than her male acolytes, Luke Skywalker and Han Solo.  She was not a female character we'd seen before, and while Carrie Fisher, who played her, is now sadly gone, Princess Leia has become a cultural icon.

Anne: I always find this kind of question -- one with lots of enticing choices -- difficult to answer. Will I choose to be some fabulous heroine, living an extraordinary life, having adventures with a handsome and charming hero?  No. So exhausting, having adventures. And besides, Cary Grant is dead.

So I'm choosing to be Maggie Smith's character in MY HOUSE IN UMBRIA. It's similar enough to my life, in that she is a romance novelist, but she lives in a beautiful and luxurious house, in a stunningly lovely part of the world, and her clothes in this movie are gorrrrgeous.  Chin chin.

Pat: I am a wimp. Give me a good comedy or maybe a nice character study, but I never watch action movies with bigger than life heroes. Give me Marian the Librarian or a singing nun, please (not just Maria in Sound of Music but how about Whoopie Goldberg in Sister Act?). My idea of a super heroine is a good librarian handing out culture, creativity, history, and education every day. Or a teacher trying to make kids THINK when all they want to do is arm wrestle. But I'd make a lousy librarian or nun. So maybe I should aim for the romance writer in Romancing the Stone? At least she got out of the house.

Jo: I wanted to say Xena, because I can really get into that Warrior Princess stuff and I’d like living in a Greek Mythos world. Kinda.
Then I noticed Xena isn’t a movie person. She’s a TV series. Rats.

My mind kept tossing up good choices and I kept batting them away. “That’s a Book!” I’d yell. “Book. Book. Book. Book. Book! Give me movies!” You see my problem.

Then it came to me. What would I like doing? I am not a woman given to bounding over the countryside, jumping on a horse, and setting off to battle demons whose halitosis alone would fell a Roman legion. I am not, in short, Buffy. Or even Willow. Confronted with Evil — note the upper case to say it’s a bad evil — my immediate impulse is to murmur “You do you, okay?” and back away to seek expert help.  That aforementioned Legion, perhaps. I’m more an “I’ll track ‘em down. You stomp on them.” kinda gal.

So. Jane Marple.
That’s me. Going through life, knitting and murmuring, “​Well, you know, Inspector, this poisoning reminds me of little Bobby Fisher in St Mary Mead.”

Andrea/Cara: I love the theme of strong women developing here! Okay, I’m not really sure I’d have the courage and determination to be this movie character, but I’d choose to be Katherine Johnson in the movie Hidden Figures, which is based on her true-life story. Johnson was a a brilliant African-American mathematician who went to work as a “computer” for NASA during the 1950s. With grace, wisdom, composure and quiet self-confidence, she overcame the dual prejudices against her race and her gender (NASA was a very high-testosterene place) to win the acceptance and ultimately the admiration and respect of all her colleagues. In those early days, the complex calculations for orbit trajectories and re-entry angles were done by individuals, using only an adding machine. The lives of the astronauts were literally in the hands of the “computers.” Johnson was so impressive in meetings that’s said that John Glenn refused to get in the capsule for the first U.S. space flight to orbit the earth until she okayed the numbers. She's a real-life super hero, an inspiration and role model for believing it’s possible to reach up and touch the stars.

Susan: So many great choices! Which movie character would I want to be? Wonder Woman and Princess Leia would be among my picks ... though I would also love to inhabit the characters of Lady Isabeau in Ladyhawke, or Merida in Brave. Both are strong female leads with courage, cleverness, integrity, compassion and heart--and both must find their own strength of character to face up to supernatural power. 

Isabeau's inner beauty glows even more than her outer beauty--her compassion and love for Navarre surpass everything for her, even her own life. What she endures, under the magic spell that makes her a hawk by day and a woman on her own at night, helps her discover true courage and independence, so that she is finally able to stand up to the evil and hatred that would have destroyed her and her love, and she steps forward as Navarre's true equal as well as true love. Movie or not, I think I could live as Isabeau, finding happiness at last ... and it would be amazing to fly as a hawk! 

Princess Merida in Brave is all that I love in a medieval Scottish heroine--strong-willed, independent, spirited, yet aware of the needs of others and capable of facing her fears, admitting mistakes and changing for the better. She's a fun, feisty, and adorable heroine, fearless and a bit reckless, handy with a bow ... and that great mane of curly red hair is gorgeous. An added bonus, if I could be Merida, would be the chance to live in the wild Highlands -- and someday (because Merida is a young heroine) find the perfect kilted, brawny, wonderful hero to share romantic Highland adventures....

So there you have it; a whole host of different takes on movie characters and what would make us want to step into their shoes. Now it’s over to you! Which movie character would you like to be and why?

Return of The China Bride!

By Mary Jo

I'm delighted to have retrieved the rights to my Bride trilogy. Book 1, The Wild Child was released in November, and now book 2, The China Bride is available. Here is the tagline I came up with for the trilogy:

Three extraordinary women,
    Three powerful men,
         Three passionate, unlikely marriages.

When I wrote that, I realized that all three are marriages of convenience that become true marriages of the heart. In other words, pure romance!

As a kid, I was always fascinated by the distant, empty spaces on the maps at school, which may be why I've written a number of books where my intrepid British protagonists have adventures in distant lands.

(I've learned I can usually do about three exotic settings in a row before my publisher starts muttering about returning to Britain. <G>)

But China has special resonance for me because I grew up hearing my mother's stories about living in China when she was a girl. Her father was an anatomy professor at the Peking college of medicine, and there are pictures of my mother and her little brother bundled up to ice skate. She also had a marvelous collection of Chinese jewelry, brass ware, rugs, and embroidered Mandarin garments, which stimulated my imagination wonderfully.

 

New Zealand for the Sunshine

Pat here:

Those of you who follow the wenches regularly know that I’m a notorious sun lover. Even though I now live in Southern California, the land of sun, I still love traveling to the southern hemisphere and enjoying the long days of summer while the US is experiencing the short days of winter. Since our son, the ultimate sun-lover, lives in the Philippines, we meet every other year in a warm place none of us have explored. This year, it was New Zealand.

The written history of New Zealand isn’t very long. The country was the last habitable place in the world to be discovered—the Maori didn’t arrive until roughly 1200 AD, after Polynesia became overcrowded. We have only their oral history for that.

The first European to discover NZ was a Dutch explorer in 1642, Abel Tasman. We visited a spectacular national park named after him, right along the western coast with untouched natural beaches, rock formations, and amazing wildlife.

But it wasn’t until Captain James Cook arrived in 1769 that traders began arriving regularly. While the US was fighting a revolution, New Zealand was no more than a lawless trading post, fighting with the local Maori for the valuables they could strip from the land, and destroying flora and fauna found nowhere else in the world. (extinct Moa from the Auckland museum)

Not until 1840 did the British establish a government, in cooperation with the Maori. Maybe because New Zealand was established so late in history, it grew at a slower pace and in what I consider to be a more civilized fashion. Agriculture still seems to be the predominant business—no big box stores and sprawling suburbs. They still have real downtowns!

We could barely cover the entire country, much less delve deeply into culture and history, in our spare two weeks. But we did our best! Auckland has a fabulous museum where almost the entire first floor is devoted to Maori artifacts and history. From Auckland, we drove to Hobbiton—in the farmlands south of Matamata. The rolling hills remind me of the Cotswolds. I could have spent far more time there, just as I’ve always wanted to linger in the Cotswolds. The Hobbiton movie set was built on a farm and if you arrive early enough, before the crowds, it’s a little like walking through the movie. You expect Bilbo or Samwise to step out of their homes at any time. The flowers are maintained by the young student employees, and it’s very much like walking through an old English village—except for the hobbit doors!

Ever onwward, we traveled south to Rotorua, home of fascinating hot springs that fill the town with the scent of sulfur when the wind blows the right way. There are several Maori villages there, where local families offer insight into the traditional language, music, and culture. I’m not too much on bathing in hot springs, but the Maori dances are a wonder to behold! (we have some great video, if only I could figure out how to download from an ipad!)

From there, we really should have gone to Christchurch, but due to various road closures, we were directed back to the opposite coast, where we explored the Abel Tasman park mentioned earlier.

Since we’re not athletic, don’t backpack, bicycle, or climb mountains, we spent more time driving through the mountainous south island than actually exploring it. At the last minute, we decided to skip the glaciers and cross back over to historic Christchurch. I could easily have spent a week there, but we were running  out of time. So we trotted quickly through the botanical garden, adored the Nor'West Arch Morris Dancers dancers, didn’t have time for the animal reserve, which we really wanted to see. And then we hiked all over the vibrant downtown area, so sadly damaged by the earthquake.

We ended our journey in Queenstown, where we ate decadent chocolates, cooked our steaks on stones, visited a fabulous bird park, and surrendered the car to take a bus tour to pristine Milford Sound, enjoying not driving anywhere for a while.

The best part of the journey, of course, was visiting with our son, but I’d go back in a heartbeat. Is there some part of the world you’d love to visit? Why?

A Year of Great Stories

Susan here – Yuletide is done, the cold winter winds are whistling around outside the house ... the holiday paraphernalia is tucked away in boxes, the pine needles are vacuumed up, plaid tablecloths cleaned and put away, green wreath off the door. The new year is just a week old, and hopes are high for 2018. Some of 2017 proved to be, for my family, a bit of Toad's Wild Ride, but the year brought good things too – including wonderful reads that I'm so glad I discovered. A few of these are now sitting on my keeper shelves, and I'll find space there for the incredible new reads of 2018.

So here are some of my favorite books from 2017 - delightful, touching, powerful and light, I loved them all. I haven’t included the books written by the Word Wenches - that would need a whole new blog! - though you already know how much I love and admire their books (see our sidebar for their 2017 titles)! All these and other wonderful books made 2017 a year of great stories . . . . 

Questions? Suggestions?

Dear wenchly readers, many years ago, when we first started this blog, we asked readers to send in questions and suggestions for things they'd like us to try to answer or blog about.

Two kinds of questions came flooding in -- some were more substantial than others. Some could be answered in a paragraph or two.

If a wench uses one of the meatier questions for a blog, whoever sent in that question wins a wenchly book.

We use the shorter questions for our Ask-a-Wench mid-monthly post, where a handful of wenches would respond to the same question.

The thing is, dear readers, that early flow of questions and suggestions has slowed to a trickle, so we thought we'd put out a call for more, just as a reminder. We like to stay relevant to our readers. And a timely question or suggestion can inspire a wench deep in deadline frenzy.

You can either post them here, in the comments stream, or email them directly to Melissa, our Wenchly Whip at  [email protected]

Thanks so much

Anne, on behalf of all the Word Wenches. And sending a small splash of summer color to keep all you chilly folk warm.

 

A peach of a Christmas

Anne here, with the last of our Christmastide daily posts. We hope you've enjoyed them. (Of course, for Orthodox and Eastern Christians, Christmas celebrations are just about to start, so if this is you — Happy Christmas!)

I started my first Christmastide post with talk of picking peaches and here are a couple of photos, which I include not to make you envious, but as a reminder to those in freezing climes that spring and summer will come again, truly it will. And in the meantime you can have your peaches canned, brandied, as jam or in some other delicious form.

A Winter Interlude from Bellewether

Susanna here, with a day that somehow completely got away from me! We've been moving my elder son into the city, closer to his college, and my younger son's been catching up on homework over the holidays, and my usually low-maintenance dog has been Very Demanding—most probably feeling deprived of attention.

So in place of a proper post, I thought I'd share a short, winter-themed excerpt from my upcoming novel, Bellewether, which will be published here in Canada in April of this year, and in October in the States.

A Cold Plunge!

Nicola here! There are many Christmas and New Year traditions that I enjoy. Most involve being cosy and warm, out of the elements, maybe eating special food or chatting with friends in front of the fire. I might even go for a brisk walk with the dog, particularly if it's been snowing. I've already been to the swimming pool in an attempt to start 2018 in a healthy fashion. And yet... Possibly my least favourite way to mark either Christmas or New Year would be by jumping into cold water. Perhaps I'm missing something, though, as every year, more and more people are taking the plunge to celebrate the festive season.

The tradition of "winter swimming", open air swimming in the winter season, has long been associated with Epiphany in countries like Russia and in Eastern Europe but in the UK it has become popular for reasons varying from an extreme hangover cure to raising money for charity. The earliest record of the tradition in England seems to be from 1860 when the Brighton Swimming Club, which comprised a number of tradesmen from the town, met up at 7am every day for a dip in the sea. Apparently they had formed the club two years earlier when they had all decided they wanted to learn to swim, which is rather cute. Many other Christmas and New Year swims were established in the 20th century and have been running for approaching 100 years. Suitable garb these days can be anything from bikinis and mankinis to fancy dress and Santa costumes! 

Lidos and open air swimming pools are nothing new, of course, but in the far north (or south) it does take a hardy spirit to embrace them. Whilst the first official lido in England was established in the Regency period at Cleveland Pools in Bath, there is a record of an open air pool at one of Oxford's colleges in the medieval period!

Have you ever celebrated the festive season with a plunge into cold water? Are there traditions like that near where you are? Or have you done something different but equally challenging to welcome in the New Year?

Holiday Houses

by Mary Jo

Many great historic houses are now museums, national treasures that are open to the public. I've enjoyed visiting many of them in the UK and US. They are often run by foundations and "Friends of" groups and volunteers. And they need to pay the bills to keep the lights on and the tours running, which means tickets and gift shops (which are often full of delightful and pricey merchandise.)

A good way to keep people coming is by designing elaborate shows and decorations, particularly at Christmas. A couple of weeks ago we visited Longwood Gardens, a du Pont estate just west of the Delaware state line in Pennsylvania.

The grounds and conservatory are magnificent, and for a few more days splendid with holiday decorations.  Above left is the hall entrance to the main conservatory, with pillars and flamboyant chandeliers.

I'm posting some of my favorite pictures here.  I love the scarlet and green plant ball hanging in a hallway of misty greenery, below. And I've never seen poinsettias in the golden shade at the right.

There are many other such gorgeous places. My sister and a friend had lunch at Greenbrier, a legendary estate in North Carolina, and she said it was wonderful.

Several years ago we visited Winterthur, another legendary du Pont estate in Delaware.  (We passed it on the way to Longwood Gardens--they're not far apart.)  It's the fifth largest house in America and has a major collection of Americana. I liked the splendid table setting just awaiting the guests.

Have you visited any such holiday presentations? If so, where? And do you have a favorite historic house that you visit?

Mary Jo, who loves showing pretty pictures of houses for Christmastide!