Word Wenches

What We're Reading: February Edition!

Susan here, with "What We're Reading" for February: a variety of romances, traditional and non-traditional; mysteries, contemporary and historical; classics; post-apocalyptic; paranormal; and a dash of nonfiction. Scroll on down, friends -- your wish lists and TBR stacks are about to grow exponentially!

Mary Jo here:

New Zealand contemporary romance writer Lucy Parker is a great hit with the Word Wenches.  I believe it was Anne Gracie who introduced us to her with Parker's first London Celebrities book, Act Like It.  The wit, banter, and intelligence of this romance between two theater actors in London's West End made the story an instant favorite of mine. 

The stories work fine as standalones, but they all take place in the same general West End milieu so characters wander through each others' stories.  The heroine of book #4, The Austen Playbook, was actor Freddy Carlton.  Her sister, Sabrina Carlton, is the heroine of recently released book #5, Headliners, London Celebrities #5, a sparkling enemies-to-lovers story.  Sabrina appeared in The Jane Austen Playbook, and she's the very successful and popular anchor of a TV evening show.  Nick Davenport is host of a show on a rival network, and he brashly broadcast a Carlton family scandal, earning Sabina's red headed rage. 

Then one of their networks buys the other, there isn't room for two evening shows, and Sabrina and Nick are made co-hosts of the live morning show which has terrible ratings.  If they fail, they'll both be in the market for new jobs or even new careers.

Sparks and much humor ensue!  Highly recommended if you like wit and banter entwined with your romance.  The broadcasting world is convincing, too. 

My other suggestion is something very different. There is a sizable subgenre of male/male romances, usually abbreviated as m/m and written by women. The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite is the first female/female romance I've ever read. A Regency historical, it features Lucy Muchelney, a brilliant young mathematician and astronomer who had worked closely with her father.  After his death, she realizes how trapped she is by a male society that has no use for female scientists and largely refuses to admit they exist. 

Lucy's clueless brother is threatening to sell her telescope when Lucy goes to the widowed Lady Moth, a countess who had supported her husband's scientific endeavors.  Lucy wants to translate an important French astronomical work into English, and she persuades Catherine St. Day, the countess, to become her patron.  Though Lucy has always been aware of her sexual orientation, Catherine has never considered such a thing.  But as they live in the same house and work together, they are drawn together in a deeply romantic way. 

The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics is not only an unusual and powerful romance, but also exploration of the obstacles and politics facing women of science.  And it has a very satisfying ending! Recommended if you'd like to try something different.

 

Writers Playing Well With Others

by Mary Jo

Occasionally I've been asked who I might like to collaborate with to write a book.  My answer is more or less "That will happen over my dead body!"  It's my book.  MINE!!!

Yet though writing is justly known as a solitary pursuit, that doesn't mean that writers don't like talking with other writers, and that we can find ways of benefiting from such interactions.

I'm part of an online book club of long time authors.  We all started in romance, and some have gone in different directions such as mystery, women's fiction, and paranormal.  But we're all storytellers in our DNA, and our last book discussion slid into talking about writer's processes (often very different} and that morphed into a discussion of working with others in a constructive way. 

Imposter's Syndrome is pretty common, even among successful writers who have written dozens of books.  The feeling, usually when one is in the middle of writing a new book, that someone will say "You're a fraud!  You don't really know how to write!"  This can happen despite the evidence of multiple awards and bestselling books, proving that authors are masters of cognitive dissonance. <G> 

As Maris Soule said, "I know I was relieved, years ago, when I heard other successful writers say they feared one day the world would discover they really didn't know how to write or create a story."  

 

It was a Dark and Stormy Night . . .

Andrea here . . . Today I’m musing about the weather. What with all the recent climate catastrophes around the globe, it’s made me focus on how much I take for granted that whatever the day brings—rain, shine, cold or heat—it’s usually merely a minor nuisance or one of those welcome small pleasure, not something that has a profound impact on my life. Modern life, with its astounding array of ways to avoid the inconvenience of bad weather, makes it easy to forget what an awesome force it can be when roused to  showing its teeth.

Out and About

Anne here, bringing you a very short post. I'm away from home at the moment and sitting in a hotel room, having eaten take-away Thai food while watching old reruns of Friends and Seinfeld. I drove up today to Wodonga, a town on the border of New South Wales and Victoria, about four hours drive north-east from Melbourne.

I'm here to conduct a one-day writing workshop called Write That Novel, and I'm looking forward to it. I always find these things both a challenge and also inspirational: a challenge because I have no idea who will be in the class, but going on previous experience I expect there will be some people who are complete beginners, and others who've written several complete novels. And I won't know who I've got until the class has started and they've introduced themselves.

The challenge then is to provide information and activities that will help the beginners get started—and not intimidate them or overwhelm them with too much instruction— but that will also interest and hopefully stimulate those with more writing experience.

The unknown aspect of the class is also a source of inspiration. You never know what's going to happen — there can be wonderful chemistry in a class, as people brainstorm and bounce ideas off each other. And sometimes the writing pieces people produce in the class can blow me away. So I'm looking forward to it.

An Interview with Tracy Chevalier

Last week I went up to London to interview international bestselling author Tracy Chevalier as part of the Romantic Novelists’ Association 60^th anniversary celebrations. A number of people who weren’t able to get to the talk were interested in hearing about it, so I thought I would report back on it here as Tracy had so many fascinating things to say about books, reading, writing and art.

Tracy Chevalier was born in Washington DC, the daughter of  is best known for the book Girl with a Pearl Earring, which was made into a film in 2003. It’s based on the famous artwork of the same name by Dutch artist Vermeer, which hangs in the Mauritshuis in the Hague in Holland. As so much of Tracy’s writing life has been defined by art, we decided to base the interview around eight pieces of art or crafts that she chose to represent various aspects of her life, rather as Desert Island Discs does with music, and it proved to be a very interesting way to structure an interview.

How Do Authors Get Paid?

Janice Jacobson asks: “In this new world of mixed publishing - print or ebook or whatever combination thereof - how do authors get paid?  Do they get paid more promptly?  Are they getting as much as they might have received in the print-only days?  How do they track all this stuff?  Is it enough to make a living?”

Given that this is tax season and writing income is on all wenchly minds, this was a timely question, Janice, thank you! For the historical perspective of publishing and how writers got paid, I cannot do better than this in-depth article on Victorian publishing.  Or Anne Gracie’s lovely article on Victorian publishing in the digital age.

It's That Day Again. Valentines!

Joanna here, with the Wenches, talking Valentines Day and Romance and the cool things that mean love to us.

It's not always what you'd expect.

Anne, being both down-to-earth and so, so right, says:

To be honest, I'm not a big fan of Valentine's Day. It only became popular in Australia after I was an adult, and it felt very commercial. I'm much more in favor of unscheduled expressions of love -- a spontaneous gift of chocolates or flowers or something else, a romantic dinner (where you're not jostling in a restaurant with a hundred other couples trying to look romantic), a romantic night in at any time of year, a love-letter that arrives randomly. Even a job that needs doing that's been put off for a while can be

Flowers. Oh yes

romantic -- in the right context. And words of love need to be spontaneous, not scheduled according to the calendar.

 

And while I love love love roses, I don't love the ones they sell for Valentine's. Beautiful, perfect-looking red roses -- without scent. To me that's a bit like a declaration of love without the emotion. I'd much rather a slightly raggedy bunch of roses from the garden, imperfect, but with a glorious scent. Or even not-roses. I have a friend who often arrives for a visit bearing a bunch of flowers from her garden -- one or two of each kind, nothing matching or "designer" but so vibrant and pretty and with a lovely meld of fragrances.

Sailing the Spanish Main!

by Mary Jo

In the depths of winter, it's pleasant to take a vacation in sunnier climes, and the Caribbean isn't all of that far away from Maryland.  This year we decided to sail the Spanish Main on Windstar's Star Pride, a small ship holding about two hundred passengers.

 

 

We started with a two day pre-cruise extension in Panama City, which was founded in 1519 and was the headquarters for Spain's conquest of Peru.  It's at the Pacific end of the Panama Canal, which is one of the great engineering feats of history.  Here's a picture of a ship passing through the canal, protected by very sturdy fencing!

Our ship sailed from Colon, at the Atlantic end of the canal and also a major port.  From there we went to Cartagena in Colombia, founded in 1533 and a key port for sending all the stolen treasure back to Spain.  We took a carriage ride through the old city, which is a Unesco World Heritage Site.  The carriages hold four passengers, and the horses looked healthy.  Ours had just been splashed with water to cool him from the tropical heat.

The old city is very lovely, and the narrow streets with flower decked balconies reminded me of New Orleans.  The old cathedral is in the heart of the district and really beautiful. 

 

Doing Murder (Again)

The Death of King Arthur, by James Archer (1860), public domain work via Wikimedia Commons

Susanna here. All week I’ve been remembering a vintage post I wrote nearly a dozen years ago, on my now retired Not-A-Blog. I called it, “Doing Murder”, and it went like this:

*****

“I’ve been taken to task several times now for killing off characters readers are fond of. Not in every book, but in enough of them that people sometimes comment on it, and it was the rare review for Every Secret Thing that didn’t make note of the body count.

In my defense, I have to say it’s not a thing I like to do. For starters, I’m the kind of person in my private life who rescues worms from rainy sidewalks, and who captures spiders in a cup and puts them back outdoors instead of squishing them (except the spiders who were always in my bathtub when I lived in Wales, but they were big enough to carry me outdoors, and I did warn them first...) So I’m as sad as anybody when I learn I have to kill a character.

A Panorama of Paris

Andrea here, musing on research, and why I find it such fun to delve into background material to find all the little details that help to add color to a story. I’ve got a new Lady Arianna mystery coming out on April 6th—it’s titled A TANGLE OF SERPENTS—and this latest adventure takes Arianna and Saybrook to Paris in the aftermath of of Waterloo. The Allied armies have occupied the city, which has become a viper’s nest of international intrigue as Britain, Russia, Prussia and Austria all jockey for power in how to reorder France. (You can pre-order here. And read an excerpt here.)

It’s a fabulously interesting setting for a mystery . . . I found so many fun bits of color to weave into the plot. The most amazing discovery, which figures prominently in the action, is one I’m saving for close to the release date. But here are plenty of others . . .

Imagine the city suddenly flooded with soldiers from all over Europe—how do you keep them . . . er . . . entertained? And add to the soldiers all the British civilians who at last were free to visit the Continent after years of war. So tourists were also crowding the boulevards, anxious to taste all the pleasures of Paris. Well, thank heavens the city was famous for its joie de vivre. Food! Fashion! Flirting! It turns out there was no dearth of places that offered a sumptuous array of amusements.

 

On Scones (not biscuits)

Anne here, and today I'm talking about biscuits and scones. No, I'm not venturing into the territory where people with a death-wish will try to claim there is virtually no difference between English or Australian scones and US-style biscuits. (Been there, done that. Barely survived.)

The inspiration for my post today came from the frustration of reading books where Regency-era folks sit down to afternoon tea with scones and jam and cream. And no, I'm not entering the debate about which goes on the scone first, the jam or the cream. Each to his own, say I. (Obviously IMO the jam should go first, but this image from Creative Commons is clearly hedging its bets.)

Brooches - Historical Fashion Statement

Nicola here, talking about brooches. Although I love sparkly jewelry, mainly rings and earrings, I’ve never worn brooches very much.  Maybe I associated brooches with my grandmother in the same way that I thought of scarves and lavender, both of which I’ve come around to appreciating over the years. I’ve a number of brooches in my drawer but they don’t see the light of day very often. Well, that’s about to change.

Last year in the UK, Lady Hale, the president of the supreme court caused a sensation in several ways, with her ruling on the prorogation of parliament but also because of the enormous spider brooch that she was wearing at the time. This caused a fashion phenomenon and the sale of spider brooches soared whilst brooches in general became a hot trend. It turns out that Lady Hale has quite a selection of over-sized brooches, including an emerald green frog, a centipede, a beetle and a fox.