Word Wenches

What the Wenches are Reading in March!

Pat here, joining the other wenches in bringing you new books and old favorites to fill your days as we watch spring pass by from our quarantines. I hope all of you are staying well and not ready to kill your families yet!

My contribution this month is from a wench favorite, Barbara O’Neal (Barbara Samuels in historicals)—a contemporary women’s fiction titled WHEN WE BELIEVED IN MERMAIDS.

I’ve read Barbara in her very many incarnations from historical romance to contemporary category romance to women’s fiction, and I love it all. She’s an emotion-wrenching writer, and it’s impossible to read her without laughing and crying. It’s also impossible not to be swept into the world of her creation. I’ve saved this book for months. The anticipation of knowing it was in my reading pile for a day when I really needed it made me happy. I finally gave myself permission to open it, and it was well worth the wait. I savored every word.

Audiobooks!

by Mary Jo

Audiobooks!

Those of you who have been following me here know that I've had a slow but ongoing program to get more of my stories into audio format.  The main reason is because a fair number of people really like audio books.

They're great for those with commutes, or who want the distraction of stories while gardening or doing housework or other mundane tasks.  They're also a real boon for those with vision problems.  (My mother listened to a lot of audiobooks from the National Library of the Blind in her later years.)

 

Susanna Kearsley: Hail and Farewell!

by Mary Jo

Authors love hanging out with each other, interacting with readers, and writing about delicious bits of research. (Especially historical writers on the research!)

But sometimes an author becomes too busy to include regular blogging in her life.  Such is the case for Susanna Kearsley, who is bowing out with mutual regrets all around.  To say farewell, we're sharing some memories of her and her books.  The picture above is a record-setting five Wenches together in Real Life at last summer's RWA conference in New York.  From left to right: Anne Gracie, Mary Jo Putney, Andrea Penrose, Susanna Kearsley, and Patricia Rice.  (Joanna Bourne arrived later: SIX of us!)

 

A Roller Coaster Ride Through Regency Paris

Andrea here, hoping all of you are staying safe and well in these very difficult and frightening times.

It feels a little strange to continue as normal with our posts on research and whatever strikes our fancy when the world is in such turmoil. But we’ve decided that a little “normal” is probably good for all of us. (Especially things that make us smile.)

And today, it so happens that my research topic is a fun one. So, let’s all take a roller coaster ride—quiet literally—through one of the most popular entertainment to arise in Regency Paris! (Who says history doesn’t take you on some wild rides!)

On Tropes

Anne here, and today I'm thinking about tropes. "What's a trope?" you wonder? In popular fiction, it's a frequently revisited, generally beloved theme or set-up for a story. In romance it might be "friends to lovers" or "convenient marriage", "the ugly duckling", "a Cinderella story", "the Innocent and the Playboy," — you get the idea. There are dozens of tropes and new ones (or variations on old ones) are popping up all the time. (Fifty shades of trope, anyone?)

Publishers like writers to explore tropes as it makes the job of categorizing (and therefore selling) books easier, so much so that some publishers (for instance Harlequin) have titles that are not so much a book title as a phrase containing words that signal to the reader what tropes the story will explore. "The Sheikh's Convenient Bride", "The Rancher's Secret Baby". And readers who like those tropes will pick up those books.

A trope carries a promise to the reader. Readers love certain tropes and will return to them again and again. (Me, I'm a sucker for a mail-order bride story.)  But the thing about tropes is that they are also clichés to some extent, so a good writer needs to twist the trope in some way to make it fresh.

When I first started writing romance, I didn't know about tropes — not consciously anyway.  My first book, Gallant Waif, was, I suppose a bit of a Cinderella story. My heroine, Kate, was newly orphaned, home from the war, and in dire straits. The hero's grandmother effectively acts as the fairy godmother, throwing Kate together with the grandmother's wounded, reclusive grandson. Two people recovering from very different war wounds . . .  But when it was reviewed I was startled to see that some people were calling it a "Beauty and the Beast" story. I didn't see it that way at all.

In Conversation with Christina Courtenay

Nicola here. Today it is my very great pleasure to welcome back to the blog one of our favourite Wench guests: Christina Courtenay. Christina is an award-winning author of historical romantic fiction and in particular time slip and time travel romance in the great tradition of Barbara Erskine and Susanna Kearsley so it's no wonder her books are an auto-buy for me and will appeal to a lot of Wench readers too! Her latest novel, Echoes of the Runes, is set in the present day and in the vivid 9th century world of the Vikings, and she is here today to tell us more about the book.

Christina, welcome back to the Wenches! Echoes of the Runes is getting some wonderful reviews and rightly so! Please tell us about the book.

Thank you, that’s very kind of you to say!  Echoes of the Runes is a Viking timeslip/dual time novel set mostly in Sweden, both in the present and the past. It tells the story of Ceri, a Welsh noblewoman who is taken hostage by a Viking, Haukr inn hvíti (“the White Hawk”), in 869AD. Back in the present day, an archaeological dig at her late grandmother’s home leads Mia Maddox to uncover secrets of the past which will influence her life in ways she could not have imagined. As the present begins to echo the past, and enemies threaten, they will all have to fight to protect what has become most precious to each of them.

The Most Precious Jewels

By Mary Jo

The idea for this post came from chatting on our private loop about jewelry with special meaning for us, and it sounded like a fun blog topic.

Personally, I've never been particularly interested in classic jewelry like diamonds and strings of pearls.  I like bright shinys, but the jewelry that interests me most is usually old or ethnic or funky--and the pieces generally come with stories. 

 

Winner, Sulari Gentill book

Congratulations to Ruth, who has been selected as the winner  of the Sulari Gentill giveaway that went with the interview Sulari gave us. She has the choice of whichever Sulari Gentill she'd like.

Ruth has been contacted privately.

Thanks to Sulari for giving up her time to be interviewed, and thanks to all who read the interview and also those who joined in with a comment. 

Signs of Spring

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Promise of Spring, MFA

Susan here, thinking that right now we all need a little breath of fresh air, peacefulness, flowers, something pretty and restorative --and we are all ready for Spring. I know that's true for me! So here's a bit of visual therapy, a little dose of the nutrition of art and beauty, to tide us over. 

Drink deep, friends, and enjoy. There's a story in each one of these pictures, any story you like -- love, renewal, fantasy, mystery, a journey to hope, serenity -- imagine yourself there, breathe deep, relax, and enjoy! Choose a favorite image here and tell us what it brings to you. 

With a nod and a bow to our southern hemisphere friends, who are looking forward to the cooling breezes of Fall right now, here are some springtime pictures and quotes!  

Claude Monet, Spring in Giverny

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant. -- Anne Bradstreet

Those Ancient Cats

Singi, moping

Hi. Joanna here.

  If you’ve been following along carefully you’ll remember I spun out, not one, but two postings on dogs and their collars, covering everything from paleolithic hunters with dogs on leashes to the spiked collars of shepherd dogs abiding in the Medieval fields.

My dog is pleased. My cat has been moping about the place, glaring at me in a mortally offended manner, so I’ve decided everybody is going to get a little posting about way way back cats.

House cats, in any historical and factual sense, didn’t wear collars much, so we aren't going to find many of them among plain old historical ancient cats, though we'll look. 

Emma—a Heroine to Love or Hate?

Andrea here, musing today about books, movies, and Jane Austen . . . and when the three collide. I just saw the new iteration of Emma on the silver screen, and have some thoughts and reactions to share.

“Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.”

To begin with, Emma (the novel) is not my favorite Austen. (Though I do find the opening sentence nearly as witty and clever as “It is a truth universally acknowledged . . .) That distinction lies with P&P (though Persuasion is a very close second . . . pip, pip, for the Ps!) But it isn’t my least favorite either —I have to say that rating lies with Northanger Abbey, which JA wrote as a parody of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, considered the first gothic novel.

 

Sulari Gentill

Anne here, and today it's a privilege and a pleasure to have the wonderful Australian historical crime writer, Sulari Gentill, visit us for the second time.

Anne:   welcome back to the Word Wenches, Sulari. When you were last here, you were about to embark on a tour of the USA with three other Australian crime writers. (See photo on the right.)  That seemed to go really well, but then you were plunged into the horrors of the recent Australian bushfires, with your home, family and animals at risk, you and your younger son and the dogs evacuated, while your husband and eighteen year old son, both members of the RFS (Rural Fire Service — a Volunteer Firefighters Organization) stayed back to fight the fires. They were on the fire front in trucks that were melting, facing flames that were sixty metres (200 ft) high — in what seemed an endless, impossible battle. (Listen to Sulari describing in her own eloquent words what it was like to live through.)

It must have been an appalling time for you. We Wenches were following your situation on Facebook and elsewhere and, like the rest of the world, felt helpless and horrified. (Read the NYT article about it.)

You've emerged with your family intact, your house smoke-damaged but (just) intact and the rest of the farm burned. And yet, you've gone on to help others with the post-fire clear up, start on the rebuilding and replanting of your own farm, and still somehow managed to keep writing.

Excellent Women

Nicola here. A fairly brief blog from me today as I’m struggling towards the end of the current manuscript and am chained to it until it’s done! A few weeks ago, when I was still allowed out, I went to a talk at a local bookshop about a new book by a local author, Gill Hornby. The book is called Miss Austen and it is a fictional look at the life of the lesser-known Austen sister, Cassandra. In particular it tackles the literary mystery of why Cassandra destroyed so many of Jane Austen’s letters. Gill gave a fascinating interview into the background and research she did for the book and gave us her view on both Jane and Cassandra’s characters. She came across, as the interviewer noted, as quite protective of Cassandra; Gill said that this was because Jane is always – rightly – lauded as a genius, but Cassandra was an unsung heroine. In her words, Cassandra was an “excellent woman.”

Introducing Weina Dai Randel

Susanna here, and I'm proud to host my friend and fellow Sourcebooks author, Weina Dai Randel, for a guest post today.

Weina is the award-winning author of a linked pair of historical novels, The Moon in the Palace and The Empress of Bright Moon, about China's only female emperor, Wu Zetian.

Weina's writing is lyrically beautiful, which should surprise no one since she holds an M.A. in English from Texas Woman's University, but it's remarkable in that English is not her first langauge—she was born in China and lived there until she was twenty-four, when she emigrated to the United States and, as she puts it, "began to speak, write and dream in English".

Her Empress Wu duology of novels, which have been translated into seven languages, have received starred reviews from Library Journal, Booklist, and ShelfAwareness, and BookReporter called them the “most beautifully written, impeccably researched and well-constructed historical fiction novels released [that] year.”

Coming on Friday

Anne here. On Friday  I'm interviewing the wonderful Sulari Gentill, writer of excellent historical mysteries. Sulari's books first appeared in our monthly "What We're Reading" posts, then we interviewed her just prior to a US book tour she was doing with three other authors.

She came back home to the dreadful Australian bushfires and faced up to them incredibly close and personal, with the world around her burning and her husband and eighteen year old son fighting the fires for days on end, while Sulari and her dogs were evacuated, having to wait, helplessly, not knowing whether she had a home, or a husband and son. We wenches watched her facebook page in horror as events unfolded.   You might have read about them in the New York Times —that's her husband mentioned in the first line of the article. You can listen to Sulari herself talking about it here. 

Now she has a new book out —TESTAMENT OF CHARACTER—and the Wenches are delighted to welcome her back.

Stay tuned for the interview on Friday. Leave a comment and you'll be in the draw for one of Sulari's books. See you then.