Word Wenches

Arsenic and old wallpaper

Anne here. There I was, blithely writing a scene of my hero standing in his newly refurbished bedroom, and briefly describing what it looked like to set the scene. I'd already fallen down a general wallpaper rabbit hole — there are so many gorgeous wallpapers from that period. (Here's a National Trust site that has some beauties.)

But my hero is rather a plain man, and the gorgeous Chinese wallpapers I fancied were not the kind of thing he'd want in his bedchamber — perhaps in more public rooms in the house, but not where he slept.

So I gave him a nicely masculine room, with a green bamboo patterned wallpaper, and I had him pulling back his curtains — plain dark green with a kind of watermark pattern (which is male-speak for damask) — and looking down into the garden below. . . but as I continued writing, getting to the actual meat of the scene, a little voice started nagging at my brain.

Something about the color green and arsenic. So naturally I hit google . . . and fell down another research rabbit hole.

You see in the 18th and 19th century all kinds of experiments with chemicals and dyes were going on, and in 1771 a Swedish chemist called Carl Sheele used copper arsenite (which contains arsenic) to create a bright green dye. In 1814, Wilhelm Sattler, a German industrialist, improved on it by using arsenic and verdigris for a better green. The pigment could also be mixed to create bright yellows and rich blues.

Bonesetting

Silly me, I thought bonesetting meant setting broken bones. Since I’ve just snapped one of mine and wondered how in the name of heaven anyone in past times could deal with the frustrating complications, I started researching—only to learn that bonesetters did far more than set bones. They were medieval chiropractors, acupuncturists, and more.

I can’t type well enough yet to sort through all the conflicting details. Samuel Homola claims one of the first written mentions of bonesetting was from Friar Moulton, of the order of St. Augustine. He wrote the Compleat Bonesetter, which was revised in 1656 by Robert Turner. Apparently Turner says the book was intended to be a guide for "the use of those Godly Ladies and Gentlewomen, who are industrious for their talent God has given them, in helping their poor sick neighbors." But the guide isn’t just about setting bones. It’s about “the use of manipulation as a method of setting fractures, reducing dislocations, and restoring mobility to an injured or diseased joint.” Homola concludes that bonesetting was a woman’s job, which doesn’t ring quite true to me, especially in the Middle Ages.

So I looked a little further and learned that in the European Middle Ages, there was an entire guild of bonesetters who worked closely with physicians. As I suspected, the guilds were all male. Perhaps Turner’s book was a kind of housewife’s manual for people too isolated or poor to call on a bona fide bonesetter. But the guild apprenticed only boys, keeping them for seven years. Training was “derived from the Roman and Greek ‘skeleton men,’ and the ancient Egyptian ‘men of the hands.’” They actually had university training four hundred years before medical practitioners. Again, this was as much massage and chiropractics as fixing broken bones. Need your spine popped? Call a bonesetter.

For many reasons, political and religious, Napoleon destroyed the bonesetter’s guilds. Today, only nine large volumes about the craft remain, most of them written in Greek, Latin, and Gaelic. Maybe the little emperor feared languages he couldn’t read—or people smart enough to read them. Or perhaps the guilds had become little more than superstitious cults that defied the growing interest in science.

In Eastern families and communities, bonesetting was also learned in conjunction with acupressure / acupuncture.

So naturally I had to check out Regency England, from which my prejudices evidently stem. Yes, they had women bonesetters in England in the 18th and 19th centuries. There was even one so skilled at reducing dislocations, setting fractures, and bandaging, that mobs would follow her to the theater. But she apparently specialized in fractures, as I assumed, and of course, true physicians—all male—disdained her abilities.

This is all fun to know but doesn’t tell me how people functioned with broken bones. (My cast is fiberglass and still seems to weigh a thousand pounds. My right hand is good for nothing except finger wiggling. Try buttering toast that way!)


I learned from Wikipedia that the earliest methods involved splints. The Ancient Egyptians used wooden splints made of bark wrapped in linen and stiff bandages that were probably derived from embalming techniques. A form of Plaster of Paris was available, but it wasn’t used for bandages. The ancient Greeks also used waxes and resins to create stiffened bandages and the Romans used starch. Arabian doctors used lime derived from sea shells and albumen from egg whites. “The Italian School of Salerno in the twelfth century recommended bandages hardened with a flour and egg mixture as did Medieval European bonesetters, who used casts made of egg white, flour, and animal fat.” But mostly, bed rest was the required treatment—months of bed rest, argghhh!


War, naturally, created the need for more mobile treatment. A surgeon in Napoleon’s army (here comes real science!) studied the effects of transportation on amputated limbs and concluded immobilizing the limb instead of the whole person was sufficient for healing. Yeah, science! Of course, he resorted to the tried and true camphorated alcohol, lead acetate and egg whites for immobilization.

Various surgeons operating at Waterloo and the continuing wars thereafter eventually developed a method that foreshadows modern Plaster of Paris casts. From Wikipedia: “The limb was initially wrapped in wool, especially over any bony prominences. Pasteboard was then cut into shape to provide a splint and dampened down in order that it could be molded to the limb. The limb was then wrapped in bandages before a starch coating was applied to the outer surface.” Better than total bed rest but that had to itch like the devil after a few weeks. And it still doesn’t tell me how women and children with their weaker limbs endured the weight. My bet is on bed rest, for the wealthy at least.

Unfortunately or not, I don’t have the luxury of lounging about while my cook prepares the meals, my maid cuts them into bite size pieces, and my man of business pays the bills. I’m on a 30-day blog tour for LURE OF SONG AND MAGIC and I’m typing revisions to my urban fantasy with one hand. Oh, and let’s not forget that I’m supposed to be promoting my new reissue of SMALL TOWN GIRL and putting together the final touches on next month’s reissue of SWEET HOME CAROLINA.  If I mention any more of my current projects, my head will ache as well as my hand. I think I shall hie me to the fainting couch. (That's my new svelte black cast--goes past the elbow. The Mexican original was hot pink and twice the size. I should have taken a picture!)

What experiences have you had with broken bones? Mine was set in a Mexican hospital, another blog all of its own. (which reminds me—I had to start a new Facebook Page. Stop by and Like me, please, and admire photos of my Mexican adventure!)

Looking at the World Through Regency Glasses

Joanna here, talking about eyeglasses in the Regency period.

The idea of eyeglasses isn't new.  Dipping into wayback history, folks were getting a close look at small stuff with a clear, curving crystal in ancient times.

Here's the Nimrud Stone, a piece of ground, polished rock crystal found in the excavation of a 3000-year-old Assyrian palace.  Lenses like this have turned up in Greek burial sites that are even older. 

These first magnifying glasses gave the users up to 10X enlargement, which is to say they compare favorably with the magnifying glass you have in your desk right now and use for reading the print in your OED or threading needles or staring in bemused enjoyment at the whorls and ridges of your thumbprint. 

Scholars figure these very early lenses were used by Greek and Sumerian craftsmen to produce the unbelievably fine detail in some of their art work.  Or gazing at the rings of Saturn.  Or, y'know, looking at their thumb.

What limited the number and quality of these first lenses — the reason Cleopatra didn't wear eyeglasses — was they hadn't got around to making cheap and clear glass yet.  High quality glass was precious. That's why Tutankhamun's hoard of jewels is made of gold, ivory, lapis lazuli, carnelian, turquoise, and . . . glass.  This must have come as a disappointment to the Victorian treasure-seekers in the Nile valley.  They'd open a tomb and pull out a fancy pectoral or amulet and it was brilliant, colorful glass, instead of, say, brilliant colorful emeralds.


Folks finally made reliably clear glass on a large scale in Italy. 

Thirteenth Century Italy was the hotbed of glass technology for its day.  Venice — the Medieval Silicon Valley of glasswork — turned out round, hand-held magnifiers on a regular basis.  About 1280 some bright lad, his name forever lost to history, mounted two of these glass disks in round frames and joined them together.  Presto.  Eyeglasses. 

And, lickety-split, as historical innovation goes, we get portraits of people with spectacles.  This 1352 portrait to the left may be the earliest representation of eyeglasses.



There were two kinds.  Perch-on-the-nose glasses, for one.  Pince-nez we'd call them now.  That's a circa 1700 example on the left.  This picture to the right is from 1466.

We also get a scissors-type eyeglasses that joined together at a hinge and could be adjusted to fit.  This kind of glasses could be held up as we see to the left, or held up from below.  The scissors glasses seem awkward, but they appear in portraits right along to the Regency so they must have had hidden charm and utility.

You can see the difficulty with both kinds.  They were always ready to fall off.  You had to tie a ribbon around your head or keep one hand on your glasses.  Tedious, to say the least. They'd be for reading and close work only.

In the early 1700s a London spectacles maker, Edward Scarlett, advertised a clever solution.  His glasses had folding hinged struts on the sides and two arms to hold the optics onto the head.  There were even loops, sometimes, to tie the glasses on.  Now your spectacles didn't fall off every time you incautiously reached for a new sheet of paper. 

It became practical to walk around wearing the things.  All this improvement in eyeglass technology meant people could pay intelligent attention to where they were going. This lasted till the invention of the ipod.
Benjamin Franklin, one of my favorite people — he's up at the top of the page — invented bifocals in 1784.
It was also in the Eighteenth Century that glasses met the masses.  They were no longer for scholars and artists.  This traveling glasses pedlar on the left argues that glasses were cheap enough that a country woman in a cottage was likely to buy a pair. This ragged tailor on the right can afford glasses to pursue his trade.
 
I haven't found examples of these Georgian and Regency glasses with a curve to fit neatly around the ear.  They seem to have hugged the head in a steely embrace, doubtless leading to many a Regency headache.  Some, intended to tuck into the fashionable wigs of the time, had fierce and sharpish-looking points.

Now, with all this development of practical eyeglasses that gripped the head and stayed on and didn't require constant fidgeting, you'd think the old, precarious sort without side pieces would disappear. 
Not so much.  As the new utilitarian eyeglasses spread through the hoi polloi, the inconvenient older optics were now considered spiffy and upper-crust.

So, you had your quizzing glass. 
This was a single, hand-held lens, like a magnifying glass. 

Single lenses that you held had long since been replaced by spectacles for everyday use.  Round about 1790 the French, as the French will, turned this passe object into a fashion accessory.  If you needed glasses, or even if you didn't, you could walk around with a quizzing glass handy, maybe hanging it on a long chain worn around the neck. The you whipped it out to inspect something.
Fashionably.

 
The double-barreled version of the quizzing glass was the lorgnette, which is sort of glasses-on-a-stick.  Like the quizzing glass, the lorgnette was a decorative social prop, capable of depressing pretension all the way across the ballroom. 

The word lorgnette, you will be pleased to know, comes from the French lorgner, 'to peer at', from Middle French lorgne, 'squint'.  The French, being contrary, call this instrument a face-a-main — a 'face-to-hand' — and then use the French word lorgnette to mean, not that, but a quizzing glass or small telescope.
The word English word 'lorgnette' appears in 1803 so you should probably not have your character raise her lorgnette to intimidate an encroaching mushroom before that.  Unless she is French.  In which case she is talking about a quizzing glass. 
Life is complex.

One thing you notice, when you're looking at paintings of Georgian and Regency crowd scenes, is how few people are wearing glasses.  When you do see glasses in a crowd, they're generally perched on the nose of a plump parson or peering, bent old woman.  I set aside the possibilities of Eighteenth Century Lasik surgery, contact lenses, and a general eagle-eyed-ness in the population and ask myself why.


Regency Romances portray glasses as a bit fuddy-duddy.  Our Regency heroines hide their spectacles in their reticules (and our Regency heroes have better eyesight than the average squad of fighter pilots.)  This is a Regency Romance convention that seems to have good evidence on its side. 

Nimrud stone and quizzling glass attrib British Museum. Scissor glasses and lorgnette attrib The Met. Pectoral of Senusret cc attrib John Compana. Glasses with wig points and glasses with loops Museum of Vision by permission. Spectacles and case attrib V&A.
 
 
So.  Thinking about the impact of eyeglasses on the world . . .  Imagine a life with no eyeglasses, and you with not-so-good eyes.  What would you miss most?
One lucky commenter will win a still-fairly-hot-off-the-presses copy of Black Hawk.

Looking at the World Through Regency Glasses

Joanna here, talking about eyeglasses in the Regency period.

The idea of eyeglasses isn't new.  Dipping into wayback history, folks were getting a close look at small stuff with a clear, curving crystal in ancient times.

Here's the Nimrud Stone, a piece of ground, polished rock crystal found in the excavation of a 3000-year-old Assyrian palace.  Lenses like this have turned up in Greek burial sites that are even older. 

These first magnifying glasses gave the users up to 10X enlargement, which is to say they compare favorably with the magnifying glass you have in your desk right now and use for reading the print in your OED or threading needles or staring in bemused enjoyment at the whorls and ridges of your thumbprint. 

Scholars figure these very early lenses were used by Greek and Sumerian craftsmen to produce the unbelievably fine detail in some of their art work.  Or gazing at the rings of Saturn.  Or, y'know, looking at their thumb.

What limited the number and quality of these first lenses — the reason Cleopatra didn't wear eyeglasses — was they hadn't got around to making cheap and clear glass yet.  High quality glass was precious. That's why Tutankhamun's hoard of jewels is made of gold, ivory, lapis lazuli, carnelian, turquoise, and . . . glass.  This must have come as a disappointment to the Victorian treasure-seekers in the Nile valley.  They'd open a tomb and pull out a fancy pectoral or amulet and it was brilliant, colorful glass, instead of, say, brilliant colorful emeralds.


Folks finally made reliably clear glass on a large scale in Italy. 

Thirteenth Century Italy was the hotbed of glass technology for its day.  Venice — the Medieval Silicon Valley of glasswork — turned out round, hand-held magnifiers on a regular basis.  About 1280 some bright lad, his name forever lost to history, mounted two of these glass disks in round frames and joined them together.  Presto.  Eyeglasses. 

And, lickety-split, as historical innovation goes, we get portraits of people with spectacles.  This 1352 portrait to the left may be the earliest representation of eyeglasses.



There were two kinds.  Perch-on-the-nose glasses, for one.  Pince-nez we'd call them now.  That's a circa 1700 example on the left.  This picture to the right is from 1466.

We also get a scissors-type eyeglasses that joined together at a hinge and could be adjusted to fit.  This kind of glasses could be held up as we see to the left, or held up from below.  The scissors glasses seem awkward, but they appear in portraits right along to the Regency so they must have had hidden charm and utility.

You can see the difficulty with both kinds.  They were always ready to fall off.  You had to tie a ribbon around your head or keep one hand on your glasses.  Tedious, to say the least. They'd be for reading and close work only.

In the early 1700s a London spectacles maker, Edward Scarlett, advertised a clever solution.  His glasses had folding hinged struts on the sides and two arms to hold the optics onto the head.  There were even loops, sometimes, to tie the glasses on.  Now your spectacles didn't fall off every time you incautiously reached for a new sheet of paper. 

It became practical to walk around wearing the things.  All this improvement in eyeglass technology meant people could pay intelligent attention to where they were going. This lasted till the invention of the ipod.
Benjamin Franklin, one of my favorite people — he's up at the top of the page — invented bifocals in 1784.
It was also in the Eighteenth Century that glasses met the masses.  They were no longer for scholars and artists.  This traveling glasses pedlar on the left argues that glasses were cheap enough that a country woman in a cottage was likely to buy a pair. This ragged tailor on the right can afford glasses to pursue his trade.
 
I haven't found examples of these Georgian and Regency glasses with a curve to fit neatly around the ear.  They seem to have hugged the head in a steely embrace, doubtless leading to many a Regency headache.  Some, intended to tuck into the fashionable wigs of the time, had fierce and sharpish-looking points.

Now, with all this development of practical eyeglasses that gripped the head and stayed on and didn't require constant fidgeting, you'd think the old, precarious sort without side pieces would disappear. 
Not so much.  As the new utilitarian eyeglasses spread through the hoi polloi, the inconvenient older optics were now considered spiffy and upper-crust.

So, you had your quizzing glass. 
This was a single, hand-held lens, like a magnifying glass. 

Single lenses that you held had long since been replaced by spectacles for everyday use.  Round about 1790 the French, as the French will, turned this passe object into a fashion accessory.  If you needed glasses, or even if you didn't, you could walk around with a quizzing glass handy, maybe hanging it on a long chain worn around the neck. The you whipped it out to inspect something.
Fashionably.

 
The double-barreled version of the quizzing glass was the lorgnette, which is sort of glasses-on-a-stick.  Like the quizzing glass, the lorgnette was a decorative social prop, capable of depressing pretension all the way across the ballroom. 

The word lorgnette, you will be pleased to know, comes from the French lorgner, 'to peer at', from Middle French lorgne, 'squint'.  The French, being contrary, call this instrument a face-a-main — a 'face-to-hand' — and then use the French word lorgnette to mean, not that, but a quizzing glass or small telescope.
The word English word 'lorgnette' appears in 1803 so you should probably not have your character raise her lorgnette to intimidate an encroaching mushroom before that.  Unless she is French.  In which case she is talking about a quizzing glass. 
Life is complex.

One thing you notice, when you're looking at paintings of Georgian and Regency crowd scenes, is how few people are wearing glasses.  When you do see glasses in a crowd, they're generally perched on the nose of a plump parson or peering, bent old woman.  I set aside the possibilities of Eighteenth Century Lasik surgery, contact lenses, and a general eagle-eyed-ness in the population and ask myself why.


Regency Romances portray glasses as a bit fuddy-duddy.  Our Regency heroines hide their spectacles in their reticules (and our Regency heroes have better eyesight than the average squad of fighter pilots.)  This is a Regency Romance convention that seems to have good evidence on its side. 

Nimrud stone and quizzling glass attrib British Museum. Scissor glasses and lorgnette attrib The Met. Pectoral of Senusret cc attrib John Compana. Glasses with wig points and glasses with loops Museum of Vision by permission. Spectacles and case attrib V&A.
 
 
So.  Thinking about the impact of eyeglasses on the world . . .  Imagine a life with no eyeglasses, and you with not-so-good eyes.  What would you miss most?
One lucky commenter will win a still-fairly-hot-off-the-presses copy of Black Hawk.

A Brief History of "P."

Nicola here. This is a blog about P. Not the letter of the alphabet but the other P. Yes, today I am lowering the tone of the Word Wenches with a blog about some of the use to which urine has been put throughout history. When I was discussing the topic of P with the other Wenches (as we do) we discovered that we already knew quite a few of the historical uses of “pee” and we thought we’d like to share them because there are very few substances as versatile and useful or with such interesting historical applications.

 Language

The English language has developed many words to cover the action and the place where one might have a pee. The word urine comes from Latin urina and Greek ouron and its first recorded usage was around 1325 although the verb to urinate was not formed until the late 16^th century. I much prefer the Old English word “lant” – it’s got a nice sound to it - which was in use from about 1000. Unfortunately, in pee as in many other things, Norman French overpowered native English and lant fell out of use although a few odd references remained: Bess of Harwick is recorded as owning a silver lant pot and comb. It may be that she used urine as part of a dyeing agent to maintain the red of her hair.

In Scotland the word “wesche”, later wash, was another word for urine. 15^th century Scottish poet Robert Henryson recommends the following cure for insomnia: “Reid nettill sied in strang wesche to steip, for to bath your ba cod.” – Steep red nettles in strong urine and bathe your naked scrotum in the mixture. Worth a try?

The phrase “to take a leak” sounds relatively modern but was in fact in use in Shakespeare and makes an appearance in the 1796 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose. Interestingly, the word “addled” meaning confused or slow-witted also originally derives from urine. Who would have thought that phrases such as “addle-pate” in Georgette Heyer’s books originate in the Old English “adela” meaning a pool of urine? The implication here is that the person who is addle-pated is not quite all there or only “half-baked” or “half-washed” and it refers to the use of urine in woollen industry (see below!)

So here are a few historical uses for urine: 

Harris Tweed

I have a lovely vintage Harris Tweed jacket that I inherited from my husband’s grandfather. It’s warm and windproof and it looks great. However occasionally when I wear it I get a faint but unmistakeable scent floating up from the material that speaks of its origins. Until the end of the 20^th century, the pee-tub was an integral part of the process for making Harris Tweed. The tub was a big wooden barrel with an iron lid, and chamber pots were emptied into it daily. The urine helped to fix dye colours to the wool. Urine was also used later in the tweed-making process to remove any lingering oiliness from the woven fabric and to shrink it to the correct size. The woven tweed was soaked in a barrel of urine and stamped upon, an activity known as “waulking” and from which the surname Walker derives. Elsewhere in the UK this part of the weaving process is know as fulling or tucking and is again the source of a couple of surnames.

Alum Manufacture

Urine was also an essential part of the English alum industry up until the late nineteenth century. Alum is a mordant used to fix dye to fabric. Ships carried coal from Newcastle or Sunderland, off-loaded it at Whitby and other north eastern ports, filled up with alum, took the alum south and exchanged it for barrels of urine that had been collected from London street corners, which were taken back up north.

Originally the alum industry used urine collected locally in Yorkshire but as demand outstripped supply it had to be shipped in on “lye-boats.” Most highly prized was the urine from teetotallers, followed by that of beer drinkers. Only as a last resort would the urine of upper class wine-drinkers be used. It is rumoured that this transport system was the origin of the phrase: “taking the p***.”

Gunpowder 

One of the great grievances of the early 17^th century was that the “petremen,” men who were tasked with collecting saltpetre to use in the making of gunpowder, had the right to come into people’s houses and dig anywhere they thought they might find supplies. Saltpetre derived primarily from the action of animal urine on soil so people who kept animals in their cottages frequently had their earthen floors dug up. King Charles I was petitioned by homeowners complaining about having their stables and barnyards ransacked and their houses destroyed when the walls fell down because the petremen had weakened the foundations.

To counteract the public dissatisfaction with this, Charles agreed to a different approach to the production of saltpetre, using neat human urine and mixing it with soil. In 1625 he granted a patent to Sir John Brooke and issued a royal decree stating that all men should “keep and preserve in some convenient vessels or receptacles fit for the purpose, all the urine of man during the whole year.” Animal urine was to be collected too. This proved unworkable since there simply were not sufficient receptacles available for the entire British population and their animals to pee into for a whole year and the Crown was forced to go back to the original form of collection. It was Oliver Cromwell who finally ruled in 1656 that petremen could not dig in people’s houses without permission.

The use of urine in making gunpowder once again came to the fore in the American Civil War with an advertisement in the Selma Morning Reporter of 1863: “The ladies of Selma are respectfully requested to preserve all their chamber lye collected about their premises for the purpose of making Nitre.” Carts were sent out to collect barrels of lye and the Selma nitre works provided gunpowder to the Confederacy for the last two years of the war.

Pass the Smelling Salts

There are many more historical applications of urine. In the Middle Ages, urine was used to “quench” swords. The hot steel was plunged into cold urine to cool it rapidly. This was said to be the best way to forge a sharp blade. The urine of a small red-headed boy was said to be the most effective coolant!

Forgers would give coins a suitably authentic looking patina by burying them in earth sprinkled with urine. This would turn silver coins grey or black and bronze coins brown or green depending on the sort of urine used and its quality. Such tricks have been in use since Roman times. The coins had to be “watered” every few days.

Urine was also an ingredient of smelling salts or sal volatile, much in use in the 19^th century for arousing consciousness. The newly formed police force in Victorian Britain even carried smelling salts in their uniform pockets to revive fainting victims!

I was slightly at a loss to think of a discussion question for this blog piece but then I remembered my grandmother and the various interesting substances she swore by for doing different jobs about the house. One of her favourites was to use salt and vinegar to clean the brown stains off the teacups. She also recommended washing hair in beer. (I remember using beer shampoo as a child and walking around smelling slightly alcoholic!) So my question is: which old wives tales do you swear by and do you know of any unusual usages for common substances?

Devilish Montague and Brains

While most of the wenches were in NYC romping through the RWA conference, I was at home writing blogs and answering interview questions about DEVILISH MONTAGUE, the latest in my Rebellious Sons series. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. I prefer to stay home and write. While I love visiting NYC and seeing friends and editors and agents, crowds give me hives. I don’t know how new authors remember those snappy elevator pitches they throw out when asked what they’re working on. I can’t even remember my own name when confronted with that question. I’m not shy. It’s simply the stress of the situation and my natural introversion that creates memory loss. Well, and maybe a mild case of ADD or as Jennifer Crusie calls it, the “importance of shiny things.”

I doubt that I’m alone in my inability to finesse social situations. I’m always fascinated with the differences between extroverts and introverts. It’s actually physical, so brain function is also of interest. It’s difficult to portray my fascination with brains in romance, however, since readers generally expect our protagonists to be well…heroic, unless they're zombies and eating brains. Painful shyness and Asperger’s don’t generally convey heroic, although Jennifer Ashley did a lovely job in THE MADNESS OF LORD IAN MACKENZIE.

But autism and ADD and other forms of social ineptness did not develop with the 20th century just because we learned to identify them. They’ve existed throughout the ages. We simply didn’t understand the problem. Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_figures_sometimes_considered_autistic which gives a list of historical figures who could easily have been diagnosed as Asperger’s today. The description of Henry Cavendish is almost textbook accurate. Often, the brain malfunctions causing social ineptness are in the minds of geniuses. I guess it’s hard to have all that complicated wiring and function normally.

So I played with my fascination by including a secondary character with Asperger’s in my MONTAGUE tale. My legally blonde heroine might behave as the “flibbertiwidget” that my hero calls her, but she’s not stupid. Beneath her pretty blonde curls and flirtatious ways is a woman who loves her odd little brother and wants him to have the home where he’d once been happy. Unfortunately, her boorish half-brother has gambled the house away.  The house is in Chelsea, not exactly the social center of the world, and it’s been left to dry rot for years, so it’s not exactly  valuable to anyone except Jocelyn and her brother. Unfortunately, the extremely brainy, cynical, and violence-prone Blake Montague is the beneficiary of the Chelsea house. He doesn’t want it. But it belongs to his father, and he can’t sell it for the officer’s colors he wants. Access to Jocelyn’s newly acquired inheritance would be a fair trade off for the house, if marriage wasn’t the requirement for obtaining the deed.

English Cottage - Credit: Pengannel

How surly, brainiac Blake deals with a flaky wife who adores society, a brother-in-law who keeps duck eggs under pillows, a potty-mouthed parrot, a falling down shack of a house, and an encrypted message he’s determined to break should keep most readers entertained for an hour or two, I hope! If you're intrigued, there's an excerpt on my website: http://patriciarice.com/

Since I’m sitting here with a huge box of author’s copies, I’ll happily give one away to a random commenter. To stimulate your thinking caps, what flaws can you tolerate in your heroes and heroines? Which ones are beyond the pale?

The Wine Glass over the Water

God bless the King
I mean our faith’s defender.
God bless — no harm in blessing — the Pretender.
But who Pretender is, and who is King —
God bless us all — That’s quite another thing.
          John Byrom

 
Joanna, here, talking about an interesting sort of drinking glass our hero and heroine might have encountered in their travels through Georgian or Regency England.

The Jacobite Drinking Glass.

These are wine glasses that form a body of distinctive Eighteenth Century artwork.

 

We have these through a confluence of lucky chances.

First off, by 1700, English glassmaking was particularly advanced. 
A century before, the champion glassmakers were Venetian. The best glass in England was made by imported Italian glass artists, working by Italian methods. 

This changed when the English developed flint glass.  'Flint glass' contains a high proportion of lead oxide, an ingredient that makes for tough, workable, clear-as-water product.  Excellent stuff, in short.  And it was an English specialty.

I'd always wondered why this kind of glass was called 'flint glass'.  In researching for this blog, I found my answer.  In the spirit of 'I have done my research and now you are going to suffer for it', let me tell you about flint glass.

The 'flint' part of it comes from flint stone.  Flint is found in the South Downs chalk deposits of southeast England. Think 'White Cliffs of Dover'.

When you go walking along around the South Downs, the ground underfoot is white, which is remarkable.  You're walking over exactly the kind of chalk you use on a blackboard.  In that chalk you find nodules of a brown, hard, glassy rock. 

The chalk is calcium carbonate from the skeletons of billions of microscopic algae and sea creatures. (You can thank these tiny sea critters next time you use chalk.) The calcium carbonate settled to the bottom of the ancient seas to become what geologists like to call 'a white ooze'.  So expressive.

Flint was laid down at the same time.  Flint comes from the remains of sponges and other bottom-dwelling denizens of the early sea that used silica as their support structure.  The silica gelled and flowed through the soft white calcium carbonite muck till it found a void left by the carapace of some crab or sea urchin or the tunnel of some burrower.  There, it settled in.  And, voilà, we have flint, sitting there in the chalk happy as a raisin in a plum pudding.

Flint is a heavy and smooth mineral.  Very glasslike.  Some of these flints fit three in your hand.  Some are big as cantaloupes.  They are just amazing stuff to pick up in the chalk matrix.

Our pretechnological ancestors found flint nifty stuff to chip into arrowheads and knives.  In the Seventeenth Century folks came up with a new use for it.  They ground it to produce pure, high-quality silica sand.  And silica sand is used for glassmaking.

Turns out, flint is just heavily endowed with lead oxide.  Glassmakers blowing this new sort of glass were doubtless delighted to discover their flint silica produced a heavy, strong, crystal-clear glass exactly suited for engraving.

Edward Dillion, in his book, Glass, talks of the this quintessentially English flint glass.

"The Venetians in the preparation of their cristallo laid great stress on the hard white pebbles, the cogoli, from the bed of the Po or of the Ticino; these they regarded as an essential constituent of a good glass. We in England, during the reign of Charles II, succeeded in replacing these pebbles by our native flints; and this English flint-glass, properly so-called, early acquired a good reputation on the Continent."

Georgian artistic sensibilities and this perfect medium for their expression led to some of the most beautiful glassware ever created.  The slender stem of the glass in the Georgian years holds the bowl upward like a flower.  Just lovely.  The flint glass was absolutely transparent and brilliant.  The refractive index, which is close to that of natural crystal, fills cut surfaces with fire.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A characteristic elaboration arises at this time.  There was an older custom of putting a single 'tear drop' shape of air in the stem . . . see it in the example of an 'amen' glass from the Met there on the left.  (More about amen glasses later.)

In the Georgian era, artisans elaborated that single tear drop into twisting lines of light that run the length of the glass stem.  The example at the right is from the Victoria & Albert.  

These bright lines are tiny specks of air, made by pricking a line of bubbles into a rod of heat-softened glass, covering the bubbles with a film of molten glass, and then drawing the glass out thin.  The spiral is produced by twisting and stretching the rod of molten glass.  The twist descends from right to left.

A swirl of white ribbons, like in this example on the right, from the Met, would be made by bundling thin, opaque white rods of glass with rods of clear glass, heating, twisting, and drawing out the bundle.  This was very much a Venetian manner of handling glass and doubtless learned from those imported Venetian artisans.

After 1746, the fancification of drinking glasses was helped along by a whopping large excise tax on glass production. 

This is one of those unforeseen outcomes politicians delight us with from time to time.  The glass tax was charged on weight, so producers found it advantageous to 'add value' and sell the final product for a higher price.  The tax was the same for a plain glass sold cheaply or an engraved one sold for much more.  Taxation in support of the fine arts, as it were. 

Summing it up . . . the Eighteenth Century aesthetic gave us English drinking vessels of exceptional quality — light, airy, and elegant.  Flint glass provided strength and clarity.  And the English were part of a centuries-old European tradition of engraving on metal that could now be applied to glass. 

Thus, drinking glasses that were works of art.  And since there was this plethora of innovative and delicate artistry lying about, the British immediately put it to use making political statements.  Glasses were engraved with 'No Excise,' or ' Wilkes and Liberty' or 'No 45'.  And among the other political glasses, they made Jacobite glasses.
In England at this time, the term 'Jacobite' meant a follower of the house of Stuart.  The word Jacobite comes from Jacobus, which is Latin for James.  In this case, the James is James II of England, who was deposed from the English throne in 1688.  Here he is to the left.  One suspects this portrait was not painted by an admirer.
 
Jacobites attempted to return the Stuarts to the throne in 1689, 1690, 1708, 1715, 1719 and, finally and disastrously, 1745.  For close to a century, Jacobites stubbornly schemed.  Secret societies met and pledged loyalty to the Stuarts.  Plots to overthrow William III, Anne, George I, or George II were brainstormed.  Treasonous toasts were drunk to the King in exile; first to James II, then to his son, then to his grandson, Bonnie Prince Charlie.  Glasses were raised 'to his Majesty', and passed above a bowl of water. making this a pledge to 'the King over the water'.

Then all leap'd up, and joined their hands
With hearty clasp and greeting,
The brimming cups, outstretched by all,
Over the wide bowl meeting.

"A health," they cried, "to witching eyes
Of Kate, the landlord's daughter!
But don't forget the white, white rose
That grows best over the water."

"But never forget the white, white rose
That grows best over the water."
Then hats flew up and swords sprang out.
And lusty rang the chorus —

"Never," they cried, "while Scots are Scots,
And the broad Frith's before us."
          The White Rose Over the Water, 1744

Sometimes, they lifted what we call, 'Jacobite glasses', in these dangerous toasts.  

Bolder Jacobites engraved their drinking vessels with symbols or words that showed their loyalty to the Stuart cause and their hopes for its restoration.  This sort of Jacobite glass didn't survive the years without a good bit of winnowing.  (One imagines them hastily smashed in the night as government forces search the house.) Glasses that can be identified as bearing Jacobite designs are rare among Eighteenth century glass. 

This led to a lively market in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century fakes.  New engraving was done on genuine Georgian glass.  Very difficult to detect.  Recent scholarship finds the works of forgers in the best museums, including the Victoria & Albert and the Museum of London.

What was engraved on a Jacobite glass? 
Jacobite mottos, for one thing.  Probably the commonest Stuart motto was 'Fiat' — 'so be it', or 'make it so'.  (Think Jean-Luc Picard.)  Also used:  Redeat. May he return.  Redditi. Restore!  Revirescit.  It revives.  'Turno tempus erit.'   There shall be a time. 

One group of glasses — the most famous and among the earliest — are the 'amen' glasses.  The one above  and to the left is from the V&A.  There's another from the Met further up.  Amen glasses show two to four verses of the Jacobite version of 'God Save the King', a crown, and the word 'Amen'. 

God Save the King I pray,
God Bless the King I pray
God Save the King
Send him Victorious,
Happy and Glorious
Soon to reign over us
God Save the King.

God Bless the Prince Of Wales
The True-born Prince of Wales
Sent us by Thee
Grant us one favour more
The King for to restore 

As Thou hast done before
The Familie.

God save the Church I pray 

And bless the Church I pray
Pure to remain 

Against all Heresie 

And Whigs Hypocrisie 

Who strive maliciouslie
Her to defame.

God bless the Subjects all 

And save both great and small
In every Station 

That will bring home the King 

Who hath best right to reign
It is the only thing
Can save the Nation.

There are 37 known 'Amen' glasses.  Modern forensic scholarship, looking at the handwriting, suggests the work of a single hand, a Scots artist and line engraver, Sir Richard Strange, between 1743 and 1749.  For more information and pictures, see here.

And Jacobite symbols?

The most frequent was an open rose and two white buds, representing James II and his son and grandson.  You can't see it very well, but there's an example of this on the glass above with the opaque swir stem.

What else?  Oak leaves and acorns represented Charles Stuart's escape from his pursuers by hiding in an oak tree.  The thistle would stand for the Stuart's Scottish heritage.  A crown for kingship. 

A compass could symbolize true direction and loyalty.  A sunflower or a sun, the restoration of the Stuart kings.  A star, the birth of Bonnie Prince Charlie. 
(When the glass was raised to toast the Stuarts, the star, representing  Bonnie Prince Charming, rose also.)

A butterfly or moth would stand for regeneration and rebirth.  On one 'Amen' glass, the figure '8' hides among the scrollwork to represent the son of James II who would have been James VIII of Scotland.

This is way too many symbols.  It's been pointed out the Jacobites could have used a marketing consultant. 

Since we're talking about roses . . . I'll send one lucky commenter in the comment trail a signed copy of my book, Forbidden Rose.  it has nothing whatsoever to do with drinking glasses or the restoration of the Stuarts, but it has a fine picture of a rose on the cover. 

So tell me . . .  what secret society — real or imagined — would you like a heroine or hero to belong to? 

Ask A Wench: Bizarre Knowledge

The Bizarre Byways of Research
By Joanna

A goodly while ago, Pat Punt asked the Wenches to 
 

. . . share some of the strangest trivia they have come across in their research.  Having done my share of surfing the 'net, I have encountered many a fact stranger than fiction.   Their experience must be even more bizarre.

Bizarre does seem an appropriate description for what we come across.

 

  From Pat Rice:

The only trivia I remember is from my childhood. I play a mean game of 60's Trivial Pursuit. <G>

But I just recently wrote about the poisonous green paint that might have killed Napoleon (Kill Your Hero with Regency Wallpaper)  and given a whole lot of other people pneumonia, asthma, and the winter blues.

But the one bit of history that sticks clearly in my mind—probably because it affected the area where I lived for twenty years—is the Mississippi flowing backward during the 1811 New Madrid earthquake. Can you imagine how powerful an earthquake would have to be to send the mighty Mississippi backward? And weirder yet, Shawnee tribe leader Tecumseh and his brother predicted the earthquake before it arrived. For some other weird stories about the period: see here.


From Mary Jo Putney:

Lord Uxbridge’s Leg
 
Many wonderful bits of bizarreness appear in research, and one recently caught my eye.  Henry Paget,  Lord Uxbridge (later Marquis of Anglesey) was colorful enough to merit a blog all on his own—even his right leg has its own story.
 
Uxbridge was one of Britain’s leading cavalry commanders during the Napoleonic wars, though he was sidelined for several years because he ran off with the wife of one of Wellington’s brothers, and Wellington was understandably not pleased.  (Uxbridge and his lady love both divorced their spouses and married each other.)
 
Uxbridge’s talents were needed at Waterloo, where he led his cavalrymen bravely and well.  One of the last cannonballs fired smashed into his right leg.  In a classic example of British stiff-upper-lipness, Uxbridge exclaimed, “By God, sir, I’ve lost my leg!”
 
Wellington, who was nearby, said, “By God, sir, so you have!”
 
Uxbridge was taken to his headquarters, a house in the village of Waterloo, and the leg was amputated while he sat in a chair.  Note, in those days no anesthesia, and I’m not sure he even had a swig of brandy.  Amputations were done very, very fast, in a couple of minutes or under—but a bad couple of minutes.
 
In more stoicism, instead of screaming hysterically like a sensible man, his only comment was that the knives seemed rather dull.  Probably they were, given the number of amputations that day.
 
Uxbridge asked his friend General Sir Hussey Vivian to inspect the amputated leg to see if it might have been salvageable.  The inspection was duly performed, and Hussey Vivian assured Uxbridge that the leg had been smashed and mangled and was better off than on.  (Though really, if a an amputated limb looked like it could have been saved, would you have told a friend that when it was too late?)?
 
So Uxbridge went home to the loving arms of his wife and got a famous artificial leg, the saw that cut off his leg went to the National Army Museum, and the mangled leg and the blood-stained chair in which he sat went on to provide many years of income to Monsieur Paris, the owner of the house.
 
At first, visitor were shown the chair, then escorted to the garden where the leg had been buried.  It had its own headstone.  Later a wit wrote:
 
Here lies the Marquis of Anglesey's limb;
The Devil will have the remainder of him. 
 
Other poetry was written to the severed limb. Royalty visited.  Revenue flowed to the Paris family, who owned the house. In 1878, one of Uxbridge’s sons visited and found the bones openly displayed.  The Paris family claimed they’d been washed into the open by a storm.
 
The Pagets wanted the bones back.  The Parises offered to sell them.  The Paget family was NOT amused.  The Belgian Minister of Justice ordered the bones reburied.  They weren’t—they were hidden away, finally to be burned by the widow of the last Monsieur Paris in 1934.  So you could say that Uxbridge’s leg had a good long run.
 
A number of Paget family members lost limbs in the Napoleonic wars, including one of his daughters who lost a hand nursing her husband on a Spanish battlefield.
 
But only Uxbridge’s leg became a shrine.

 

 

From Jo Bourne:

I have a certain interest in Napoleon, since he's either the great villain or the hero of the Regency era, depending on which side you're talking to.

During his Russian campaign, after a narrow escape from Cossacks, Napoleon asked his physician to prepare a 'suicide packet' so he wouldn't fall into Russian hands alive.  He carried the little envelope of belladonna, opium, and hellebore — 'strong enough to kill two men' — in a black taffeta pouch around his neck.   He still had it 18 months later when Allied forces of Russia, Prussia, England and Sweden crossed the border of France and swept into Paris.  France had fallen.  On April 12, 1814, at the Palace of Fontainebleau, Napoleon swallowed the poison.  

Maybe it had lost some of its potency.  Maybe the physician got his dosage wrong, not being a professional poisoner.  Napoleon was seriously ill, but he lived — to be exiled to Elba, to escape, to gather his army, to march one last time across Europe, and to meet Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo.

If the poison had been a leetle more effective, none of our heroes would have faced the battlefield of Waterloo.


From Nicola Cornick:
 
 
I love research and the distracting byways it can take me down. Three pieces of strange trivia in particular come to mind when I think about the research I’ve done.
 
Firstly, that denim has been in fashion for more than 300 years. There are paintings from the 17th century featuring people dressed in denim. In the Regency period some half-boots were made from the material. I had no idea. I thought it was a modern invention!
 
In the early 19th century, chamber pots were made that contained a musical box. In 1820 Prince Metternich was awoken in the night by a musical chamber pot that played the flute. He found and pressed a button and the music stopped, only for it to start again an hour later. The musical chamber  pot eventually ran out of steam and made what he described as “disturbing little noises.” When he complained in the morning the valet commented that there was another chamber pot in the castle that played trumpet music.
 
There were laws regulating hackney carriages that were never repealed and still apply to London taxis today. One of them is that the cab driver is supposed to ask you if you have any “notifiable diseases such as smallpox or the plague.” As carrying sufferers is illegal, he should refuse anyone who looks as though they may be infected because if you die on the journey he will be committing the offence of carrying a corpse.



From Anne Gracie:


All kinds of odd things crop up in research. One that tickled my fancy was the various attitudes to the whole notion of plague and contagion that existed in the early 19th century. The question polarized the medical profession into two camps, contagionists and anti-contagionists, and was hotly debated, even in Parliament. These reports are from Hansard (the  official UK parliamentary record) here.


Mr. Trant said: The plague prevailed at Alexandria while he was there. A surgeon with whom he was acquainted disbelieved the theory of contagion, and went among the patients in the hospital. He did not then take the infection, but wishing to push his experiments to the utmost, he got into a bed which had been occupied by one who had the infection. He did then become infected, and he died in consequence. General opinion, however, attributed the disease to atmospheric influence.

Sir Robert Wilson said, that when he went to Egypt, the impression on his mind was, that the plague was contagious; but he was soon satisfied of the contrary. When he was in Egypt, the army formed two
divisions. The one which was stationed at Alexandria took the plague; the other, which was generally in motion, was not touched with it. The difference was attributed to atmospheric influence. The Turks had no hesitation in entering the infected places. The bodies of those who died of the plague were buried in their clothes, and were generally dug up and stripped by those who had less fear of the consequences. The moving division of the British army passed through villages infected with the plague, without being touched with it...
It appeared to be one of the extraordinary phenomena of this disease, that persons who remained stationary were liable to it, and that those who passed rapidly through various currents of air escaped it.

However some historians have suggested that much of the medical fraternity's conversion to anti-contagionism was less a result of medical conviction and more a desire to oppose "expensive, arbitrary and draconian" quarantine measures that hampered trade.  Doctors declared yellow fever, the plague, and cholera — the main diseases affected by quarantines — to be non-contagious. Other diseases were less controversial


From Jo Beverley:

Torpedo War, and Sub-marine Explosions, That's the title of a book by American, Robert Fulton.

  But it was not published recently. Instead, in 1804

However a submarine vessel was demonstrated for King James 1 (early 17th century) and the Americans tried out an armed submarine during the Revolution.

There are many odd ideas in the wonderful Century of Inventions, by the Marquess of Worcester, written in the 17th century.  Here.

The "century" refers to there being 100 bright ideas. On the above page there's a description of "certain short muskets of an inch, or very near an inch bore, out of which you may shoot either chained bullets, or half a score pistol bullets, or half a dozen harquebus bullets at one shot, or you may shoot out of the same fire arrows made with strong shafts, feathered with horn, or with common feathers, glued and bound on with thread. When you are to shoot a fire arrow out of any of these pieces, you must not give the piece her full loading of powder." He further notices that " The string made fast to the end of the fire-work is to keep the arrow straight in his passage."

The illustration gives one serious doubts!

 

From Cara Elliott/Andrea Pickens:

I love doing background reading and research for my books, so I often come across arcane and unusual trivia-for me, that's half the fun! There have been a lot of weird little facts that I file away in my mental storage drawers . . . but if I have to pick one to pull out, I would say it's fact about gunpowder and how it is made.

There are three main components in gunpowder: charcoal, sulfur and saltpeter, or niter.  Saltpeter, is the waste product of two strains of bacteria . . . waste product is the operative word here, as you shall soon see.

During the Napoleonic Wars, gunpowder was, as you can imagine, a crucial ingredient for military might. And both England and France were pressed to be inventive in order to find enough domestic saltpeter to meet the demand. Traditionally, the best source was barnyard soil, for it was so rich in animal waste. And so, according to Jack Kelly's wonderful book, “Gunpowder, Alchemy, Bombards & Pyrotechnics,” the British government actually toyed with the idea of ordering all innkeepers to require that their patrons urinate in large wooden barrels, which would then be used to make gunpowder for the army (A sidenote is that the urine of churchmen who drank brandy was supposed to make the most potent powder-go figure!)

For some reason, the plan fizzled, but it still remains one of the more curious bits of trivia I've come across!

 

 

What's your favorite nugget of bold, bizarre research trivia?

Secrets Under Paris

Joanna here, talking about the secrets under the belly of Paris. 
 
It's 1800 or so. 
There you are, sitting in a café in Paris, relaxing, wearing something Parisian with great éclat and style. 

Unless you are feeling deeply philosophical it's unlikely you wonder about what secrets lie hidden beneath your feet.   

"All secrets are deep. All secrets become dark. That's in the nature of secrets." 
Cory Doctorow

It is not solid earth down there.

By 1800 there's fourteen miles of sewers cut through the rock under Paris.  I don't know why folks always point out how far something like this could stretch, but that amount of Eighteenth Century sewer would run from the Nelson column in Trafalgar Square to Terminal Five at Heathrow, neither of which was in existence in 1800, of course.  

We aren't going to talk about Regency-era sewerage, fascinating though that subject is.  We're going to delve deeper.  We're headed to the mines that lie far below that sidewalk café.

Paris feeds on itself, like the Worm Ouroboros chews its own tail.  The fine building stone of Paris is pulled from beneath the city's feet. 

From Medieval times onward, folks took that excellent limestone out of the ground and threw up little trifles of work like Notre Dame and the Louvre. 

 

Miners burrowed down sixty feet, cut blocks, hauled them out, and left behind a labyrinth of mine shafts, tunnels, and galleries under the earth.  

 

 

   
 
There's 180 miles of tunnels and quarries running under the Left Bank.  When our Regency heroine sits in a café on the Boulevard Saint-Michel, she's a stone's throw above one of those old mines.

And for a while there, the world crumbled from beneath.

While the miners were digging away over the centuries, they left big pillars of stone  in place, unexcavated, and built walls to support the roof of the mines.  This worked handily to keep the place upright while the stone was being removed, which was what the  miners were concerned about. 

 

However -- you knew there was a 'however' coming -- folks eventually came along and built on the ground above, having absent-mindedly forgotten about those pesky, empty underground spaces. 

 It turned out the miner's pillars and walls were not so much sufficient to support the weight of cathedrals and palaces that were being built up top.  There was a bit of an 'oops' factor when some of these grand structures began subsiding into the ground. 

 

The French formed a bureaucracy to deal with this.  In 1777 Louis XVI -- you will recall he came to a bad end -- ordered the formation of an Inspection Générale des Carrières (General Inspectorate of the Quarries) to explore and map the underground, to dig wells, to control new mining, and to build stonework to shore up the old mines. 

They marked the place, so they could find their way around.   Since the tunnels tended to run under the main streets, they carved the names of those streets in the walls, matching the routes through the mines to the streets of Paris above.  

 

 

Streets and  houses stopped giving way and sinking into the bowels of the earth, much to the general rejoicing of the Parisians.

 

 

 

 

A visitor to the quarries in 1784 describes them --

"The general height of the roof is about nine or ten feet ; but in some parts not less than 30 and even 40. In many places there is a liquor continually dropping from it, which congeals immediately, and forms a species of transparent stone, but not so fine and clear as rock crystal.

As we continued our peregrination, we thought ourselves in no small danger from the roof, which we found but indifferently propped in some places with wood much decayed. Under the houses, and many of the streets, however, it seemed to be tolerably secured by immense stones set in mortar; in other parts, where there are only fields or gardens above it, it was totally unsupported for a considerable space, the roof being perfectly level, or a plain piece of rock."

 

When I came across these descriptiions of the quarries I just knew there had to be a story there. 

In Forbidden Rose I send my characters walking through the tunnels and galleries of these old abandoned quarries.  While I've never visited myself, I consulted some of the intrepid modern 'cataphiles' who do explore there.  

 

 

This is Maggie and her cohort entering the quarries:

     This was what hell had been like when it was first constructed and lay empty, before the demons moved in with their cauldrons of fire and their pitchforks.  Hell would have smelled like wet plaster before it filled with the fumes of sulfur and whatever devils smell like.

     They carried candles, bringing five small points of light into this world.  Of all the uncanny occurrences since Marguerite had descended to this place, the strangest rested here in her hand.  The candle flame stood upward, only stirring when her breath fell across it.  There were no currents of air, no connection to the winds under the heavens.

 
     The rock around her was damp, full of minerals, without the least trace of life.  This was the Realm of the Underworld.  The Kingdom of Darkness.  Their candles did not challenge it at all. 

 

Author Real Life Note here:  I lived in Paris for a number of years and not once did I feel any urge to go exploring around below ground.  I don't say I'm claustrophobic, exactly.  I would just rather not walk about in dark places deep under the ground with tons of rock hanging above me just waiting to fall down, thank you very much.

Which may be why I put my characters down there . . . 

Picture attrib coffee roboppy, Carrières one, two and six by samuel marshall at pridan net, Carrières three, four and five by espritdesel, candle by florriebassingbourne.

"Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong.  No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always go there first, and is waiting for it."
Terry Pratchett

 

When you read, what's the scary environment you want to see the protagonists face? 
Or, what do you most definitely not want to read about?

A Close Shave

Nicola here. Are beards hot or not? Recently I was reading an article in the BBC History Magazine that reminded me that sporting a beard in 18th and 19th century Europe or America was far more than just a fashion choice for a man. Throughout history, in fact, the decision on whether to be clean shaven or not was often tied in to cultural and political influences.

The Historical Beard

The 16th century was a time of prodigious beards; the English beard was square cut, the Spanish one shaped like a spade and when Francis Drake (pictured with what actually looks like a Spanish beard) claimed to have singed the King of Spain's beard when he raided Cadiz in 1587 he was making a political point. His attack had damaged the enemy but had not entirely destroyed it. It was also a taunt, the 16th century equivalent of "bring it on!"

The beard also had a significant role to play in the English Civil Wars of the 17th century when the clean-shaven Roundheads believed that the Cavaliers' long curly tresses represented every possible vice, and the Cavaliers considered the Roundheads lack of hirsuteness to mean they also lacked wit, wisdom and virtue. But probably the most despotic act against the beard was Peter the Great of Russia's edict in 1698 that all Russian men should shave off their beards and his decision in 1705 to levy a tax on anyone who persisted in wearing one. He felt that Russia should embrace western modernity and the removal of the luxuriant Russian beard was one of the most telling ways to demonstrate this. Here's Peter on the left, without the beard but still with a neat little moustache!

Polish and Gentility

In the 18th and early 19th centuries being clean shaven chimed with Enlightenment notions of polish and gentility. Cleanliness and good self-presentation fitted with the idea of harnessing nature through scientific progress, and hirsuteness was condemned as unkempt and wild. Only hermits could really get away with beards and ordinary men who sported them were considered eccentric at best and untrustworthy at worst. Writing in the "Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Literature and the Arts" in 1802, William Nicholson noted that "the caprice of fashion, or modern day improvements, has deprived all the nations of Europe of their beards." But fashion and the influence of the Enlightement was not the only factor at work. Technological advances in steel-making had seen new types of metal come onto the market and some of these, particularly crucible steel, were ideal for making razors that could for the first time guarantee a close shave.

Self Help for Beginners

The aristocratic gentleman usually retained a manservant trained to handle a razor but for most men a shave was obtained at the barbers and many Georgian cariacatures poke fun at the figure of the barber with his blunt razors like "oyster knives" who scraped and scraped away at the faces of his victims. Barber-surgeons had traditionally had a role in tooth-drawing and blood-letting as well as shaving (which could be much the same thing) but in 1745 a separate Company of Barbers was established. This was also the period when shaving oneself was becoming possible. For the first time razor-makers began to advertise their products to private individuals. But shaving oneself was no easy matter in the days before safety razors, especially for those with uneven or pock-marked faces. In 1770 a French razor-maker wrote "Pogonotomie; or the art of shaving Oneself," a self-help guide for beginners.

Naturally the razor had to be used in conjunction with a variety of lathers and creams, and the 1770s was also the period when these started to be marketed to individuals. Charles Woodcock of London advertised a sweet scented lather to give a close shave in 1772 and the British Shaving Paste was launched in 1793. Shaving creams and pastes were sold in many fashionable perfumiers.

Changing times, changing beards

All fashions change, of course, and by 1850 the beard was back. In the Victorian era it was associated with ideas of masculinity and male courage. The resulting popularity has contributed to the stereotypical Victorian male figure of the stern patriarch clothed in black whose authority is underscored by a heavy beard and side whiskers. This trend can be recognised in the United States of America, where the shift can be seen amongst the post-Civil War presidents. Before Abraham Lincoln no President had a beard; after Lincoln until Taft every President except Andrew Johnson and William McKinley had either a beard or a moustache. The last word should therefore go to poet Samuel Butler, who wrote in the late 17th century: "Speak with respect and honour, both of the beard and the beard's owner.

Are you a fan of the hirsute hero? Do you prefer a clean-shaven Regency man, reflecting Enlightenment ideas, or a Victorian hero whose beard is a sign of his virility and masculinity?          

Procrastination: The Thief of Time

by Mary Jo

I’ve been thinking about writing a piece on procrastination for a while, but hadn’t gotten around to it….

Okay, I couldn’t resist saying that. <G>  In fact, while I have been a serious practitioner of procrastination for as long as I can remember, I never thought much about it, other than experiencing the usual guilt.

Then I read an article from a recent New Yorker called “Later.”  Author James Surowiecki reviewed a book of essays called The Thief of Time, including broader information on the subject as well as applying it to himself. 

The Quintessential Problem?

Procrastination has always been with us, but corrosive guilt about it is more of a modern phenomenon.  Another vestige of our Puritan heritage, probably.  We’re supposed to be working, and avoiding work feels like a sign of weak moral fiber.  As the article says, “it’s possible to see procrastination as the quintessential modern problem.”

The interesting essence of procrastination is that it’s “doing something against one’s own better judgment.”  We know we have to finish that term paper, calculate and file those taxes, finish that book.  We want those good things to happen.

And yet—we avoid working on things even though we know we’ll pay for the procrastination.  So we don’t do something we should, even though we know such behavior will make us unhappy.

And we don’t even always procrastinate to do something that’s fun!  When you start organizing your sock drawer, you’re probably avoiding something big  time. 

 

The Dangers of Self-Employment

Those who must structure their own time may be particularly prone to procrastination.  Take academics.  Finishing a PhD dissertation is a monstrously difficult undertaking, so much so that there is a term for people who have taken all the courses, done all the research, but not done the dissertation: ABD = All But Dissertation.  Even my brother-in-law, a professor and one of the most cerebral and intelligent people I know, said that his dissertation was heavy gong. 

Suroweicki’s article discusses several reasons why we procrastinate.  Goals, for example.  I really do want to read War and Peace, but right now, I am going to read the new JAK Arcane novel.  I’ll read War and Peace over vacation when I have lots of time to sink into it.  But vacation comes, and the new Sharon Shinn is out, and I want to read that instead. 

Multiple Selves

A big reason we procrastinate is that there are multiple selves within us, and they often have conflicting goals.  There are different terminologies for this, such as Freud’s classic Id, Ego, and Superego, but suffice it to say that the self that wants to finish the dissertation and read War and Peace is more interested in long term goals, while the self who goes for the fun book is more into short term gratification. 

What you want now is probably what you’ll also want in the future.  In other words, you want to lose weight, but you’ll start the diet tomorrow, right now there’s a chocolate cake in the office break room.  Come tomorrow, and there are donuts, the diet can be started on Monday, always better to start a project on Monday.

Obviously, this can go on indefinitely.  <G> 

We Need More Time!

Procrastination is related to a concept that I recognized when Ellen Goodman, one of my favorite columnists, articulated it: the unconscious belief that in the future, we’ll have more time.  I’m rushed and harried and behind on deadline and may not get my Christmas cards out this year, but NEXT YEAR WILL BE DIFFERENT! 

Next year I’ll get into the current book sooner, schedule my time better, have my Christmas cards posted and my holiday shopping done by December 1st. Or at least by December 15th.   (I procrastinate even in my daydreams.  <G>)  Yes, next year I’ll be better organized and everything will be different. 

Of course, next year is probably not different. <g>  One reason is, yes, procrastination.  Another is that we tend to think of the ideal when we schedule projects.  We’re going to sit down and get this book done in six months because we’ve written other books in six months. 

What we tend to overlook is the normal hassles of everyday life:  the cold caught in Croatia, the car that breaks down, the cat needs to be taken to the vet, the furnace fails at the first cold snap.  These things aren’t specifically predictable, but some kinds of delay will invariably happen and we’ll get behind on the project.

Solutions, or at least, Coping Mechanisms

So how can we deal with procrastination? 

One solution is bargaining.  You may want to read a fun book now, and you will want to just as much in the future. So you tell yourself that after you read War and Peace, you’ll read fun books only for the next six months.  This may work for some people, but the fun loving self often has the upper hand here.

Another solution is to raise the stakes.  If you go to Weight Watchers or make a bet with a friend, you are setting yourself up to succeed or fail in the eyes of others.  At Weight Watchers, I understand there are public weighings, plus a sympathetic peer group to help keep you on track.  If you make a bet with a friend and lose, it may cost you money. 

  
If you continuously put something off, eventually you may want to consider whether it actually needs doing.  Most of us have zillions of things we feel we “ought” to do, but some of them probably deserve to be dropped altogether.  Why waste guilt on an undeserving subject??  Maybe you don't really want to read War and Peace--you want to have read it, which is not at all the same thing.

A good solution is to set up artificial deadlines or constraints.  Surowiecki’s article cites a study done by MIT psychologist David Ariely, who assigned a class three papers that had to be done during the semester.  The students had the choice of delivering all three at the end of the term, or setting separate deadlines for each, spaced out through the semester.  They didn’t get extra credit for delivering early, but if they set an earlier deadline and missed it, their grades would be docked.

Yet even though setting earlier deadlines risked a penalty, the majority of students choose to do that.  They knew that they were unlikely to start early on all three and deliver them at semester’s end, so they chose external constraints to force them to do what they knew needed to be done. 

Setting such constraints is called self-binding, and it can be done in numerous ways.  One that I LOVE I learned about from Surowiecki.  A PhD student in North Carolina (see “dissertation,” above <g>) wrote a piece of software that cuts off your internet access for anywhere from 15 minutes to 8 hours. 

The software is called Freedom and can be downloaded in either a trial version or bought outright for ten bucks.  (Despite the site name, it works fine for PCs as well as Macs.)  You set the time you want to be offline, and the program dutifully blocks access.  (If you really, suddenly do need to get online, you can clear the program by rebooting.)

Given that the internet is an invention of the devil and the all-time biggest timewaster there is, this is a fabulous invention.  If you read the testimonials, you’ll see names you recognize.  LOTS of writers.  <g> 

So that’s a quick riff about procrastination.  If the subject interests you, be sure to read James Surowiecki’s article—there’s lots of fascinating stuff in there.

Or you can buy The Thief of Time itself, for it's surely full of marvelous insights.  It costs $65, though.  Maybe I’ll get it later…  <G>

So—are you a procrastinator?  Sometimes, not always?  What tasks cause you to use a toothbrush to clean grout as an avoidance technique?  And do you have any good coping strategies that you would be willing to share?

Mary Jo, who is amazed that she has ever managed to finish a book, much less dozens.

PS: Thanks to Anne Gracie for pointing out that I'd mispelled James Surowiecki's name wrong when I originally posted.  That is now corrected.

 

 

It's Romantic Up North!

Nicola here, with a question that you don’t get asked every day: Can industrial history be sexy and romantic? On more than one occasion I have pitched to my editor the idea of a Regency historical set against a background of the industrial revolution. The response was a very definite “No, thank you”. And yet to my mind the huge changes in Georgian, Regency and Victorian society that came with the developments in engineering, technology and industry have enormous potential as the backdrop for a romance. There’s change, there’s conflict, there’s the clash of ideas. In Cranford it was the coming of the railway as much as the arrival of Dr Harrison that set hearts a-flutter. And I defy anyone to watch North and South with Richard Armitage and Daniela Denby-Ashe as John Thornton and Margaret Hale and fail to see that the industrial North can be very romantic indeed. 

So when we planned a holiday on the Leeds to Liverpool Canal I decided to view it as a research trip as well as a vacation. Who knows – one day my editor may relent and my canal-based Regency may set sail. And in the meantime I am happy to be able to share with everyone the highlights of the trip and a few snippets of industrial history. I hope you enjoy the voyage!

A step back into the industrial past

The Leeds and Liverpool Canal was the first of the Trans-Pennine canals to be started and the last to be completed. The length and the complexity of the route meant that the canal took 46 years to build at a cost of five times the original budget. The canal originated from a proposal in 1765 to construct a canal from Preston to Leeds to carry woollen goods from Leeds and Bradford and limestone from Skipton. Prospective backers in Lancashire argued for the canal to start from Liverpool. The Yorkshire men wanted it to start in Leeds. Yes, Yorkshire and Lancashire were still arguing 300 years after the Wars of the Roses!

 

We picked up our narrow boat in a little village called Silsden in the Yorkshire Dales. Our boat, Golden Dale, was 56 foot long and designed for only two people. That meant that we would have to be prepared to open every lock and swing bridge ourselves. To add to the theme of romance on our “northern cruise” we were told that this was the honeymoon boat, but after we had struggled to open a few heavy bridges and steer through some narrow gaps and around some tight corners we reckoned that not everyone would still be talking to their partner after such stressful experiences as running aground or ramming another boat, let alone feeling in a honeymoon mood!

Literary Connections

Our first stop was at the village of Kildwick, which was very nostalgic for me as I had sung in the choir here when I was a child and had not been back for over 30 years. We moored for the night near Kildwick Hall, a stone mansion built in 1642. This was a literary diversion. During the period in which the Brontë sisters were writing the Currer family lived at Kildwick and when Charlotte Brontë sought a masculine nom de plume she chose the pseudonym of Currer Bell. Miss Frances Currer (1785-1861) who was known as a scholar and collector of books lived at Kildwick Hall at that time and may have been known to the Bronte family. Certainly Heathcliff’s home in Wuthering Heights bears a striking resemblance to Kildwick Hall and the house was also used as the setting for Thrushcross Grange in the 1920s silent movie version of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights.

His Own Personal Canal

Moving at a pace of about three miles an hour (canal travel is not to be hurried!) we reached the ancient market town of Skipton the next day and moored up to explore. I’ve blogged about the medieval castle and some other aspects of my trip on my personal blog here. As we came into Skipton we saw that many of the former warehouses and factories that were in use when the canal was a bustling industrial waterway have now been beautifully converted into flats and houses. Many retain their original features such as these curious jutting bays that feature in the photograph.

At Skipton there is a half mile branch canal that opened in 1797. This was a private canal belonging to Sackville Tufton, 8th Earl of Thanet, who owned Skipton Castle and also the local limestone quarries. Lord Thanet had asked the canal company to divert the main Leeds to Liverpool Canal in order to carry the limestone away for sale. This request had been refused. Lord Thanet’s solution – to build his own canal. As one did. We followed the Springs Branch, as this canal is called, on foot and ended walking through the beautiful woods behind Skipton Castle and admiring the impregnable fortress high on its precipice.

The Wonder of the Waterways

This unique double arched bridge west of Skipton is know as one of the wonders of the waterways because of its combination of beauty and practicality. The original bridge over th canal was built at the end of the 18th century but when road traffic became heavier it was not strong enough. The solution was to add another arch to carry the new road.

Locks!

There was originally a set of staircase locks here at Greenberfield but early in the nineteenth century these were replaced by a new set of six locks. The fields beside the canal are full of lumps and bumps where the original canal features have grassed over. Here were took pictures of the photogenic canal architecture including this charming original lock keeper’s cottage. And Andrew took a photograph of me struggling to open the locks in the heat of a summer day! Here I am below getting some welcome help from my sister-in-law who came out to spend a day on the boat with us and her family!

 

The canal prospered through the nineteenth century and was used for carrying stone, coal and many other goods. The impact of the railway age was not as great as with other canals but the coming of the lorry finally saw commercial traffic on the Leeds and Liverpool dwindling. Unlike many other canals, however, the Leeds and Liverpool Canal was never abandoned, remaining open for navigation throughout the last century. It suffered some damage during the Second World War when it was breached by a German mine. I was fascinated to discover that the canal in west Lancashire was part of Britain's defensive plans against invasion. Along the canal there were tank traps, bunkers and block houses. Some buildings such as barns and pubs along the canal were fortified and there are still some remaining concrete pillboxes to be seen.

 

The Leggers

 

On our trip we got as far as the highest point on the canal, the summit level at  Foulridge, 487 and a half   feet above sea level. The Foulridge tunnel was opened in 1796. A tale that has passed into local folklore tells of a cow called Buttercup who fell into the canal and swam the whole mile length of the tunnel before being pulled out at the other end and revived with brandy. The tunnel has no towpath so in the days before mechanisation the boats had to be propelled through the tunnel by leggers. Two people were required. They would lie on a plank across the bow of the boat, and holding the plank with their hands, would propel the boat with their feet against the tunnel wall. While the boat was being legged through the tunnel, the horse would be led over the hill. Leggers were only replaced by steam tugs in 1880. I couldn't help feeling that this would have been a very dangerous pastime. The tunnel has one way traffic only, is very, very wet inside and is full of bats!

 

I hope you have enjoyed this miniature travelogue. Now over to you - have you ever read a Regency with a background of the industrial revolution? Or a historical novel you enjoyed that featured some element of industrial history rather than the customary diversions of high society? Do you think that a historical romance set in the industrial north would appeal to you? Should I continue to pitch the idea to my editor??? Thank you!

The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

by Mary Jo

Lists.  Shopping lists, laundry list, to do lists.  They’re some of the most boring things in the world.  But lists are also one of the most powerful tools we have for dealing with the ever multiplying complexities of modern life.

I didn’t realize that latter fact until reading The Checklist Manifesto  by Atul Gawande, a doctor and writer whose resume is enough to make strong women reach for their smelling salts.

The Brooklyn born son of two Indian American physicians, Gawande is a surgeon at a top Boston hospital, an associate professor at Harvard in both medicine and public health, a Rhodes Scholar, a MacArthur fellow, director of a World Health Organization medical program, and somewhere in there he found time to get married and have children. <g>

TCM belongs to the fairly new non-fiction subgenre that uses science and really good writing to examine a narrow topic and give readers interesting new insights.  The books tend to be quite short, so you can read them quickly and come away feeling virtuous, entertained, and better informed.  While such books may be criticized for being simplistic, they’re still fun to read.

Godfather of this mini-genre is Malcolm Gladwell, author of the bestselling books The Tipping Point,  (about the “social epidemics” that create sudden change, Blink (the complex judgments that go into quick decisions), and Outliers, (about factors that help people really excel.)

Gawande’s thesis is that some errors stem from ignorance—we simply don’t know enough about a particular topic.  But many others stem from not properly using what we do know because the sheer volume of information is so overwhelming.  The subtitle of The Checklist Manifesto is How To Get Things Right.

Hence, checklists to ensure that all the critical steps are taken, and in the right order.  In hospitals and surgery, one of the top items is washing hands to prevent the spread of infection.  Everyone knows this needs to be done, but far too often, busyness or inconvenience interfere with basic hygiene, hands don’t get washed, and potentially lethal diseases are spread.
 
Gawande’s writing really reeled me in.  It’s witty, accessible, and full of human stories.  (It's that staff writer for The New Yorker thing.) 

As a doctor and surgeon, he deals with complicated medical procedures all the time, and knows how easily critical steps can be missed.  He starts with the gripping story of a little girl who spent half an hour in an icy pond in Austria.  She was pulled out pulseless and essentially dead, yet enormously complicated procedures over several weeks saved her life.  And this was done not at one of the world’s famous medical centers, but an average rural Austrian hospital.

That’s the spring board Gawande uses for a wide ranging discussion that goes from medicine to aviation to building skyscrapers.  The spine of the book is the author's part in developing checklists to improve operating room outcomes all over world.  Think of the challenge to develop checklists that will benefit hospitals from the West’s best to third world institutions that are desperately short of supplies and personnel!  Watching that operating room list being developed was fascinating.

Gawande's research into improving outcomes takes him to one area where checklists are really well established: aviation.  In 1935, the prototype of the B-17 Flying Fortress bomber crashed during a competition for the army because the highly experienced pilot had so many things to remember that he forgot to release the lock on the elevator and rudder controls. 

Two men died, including the pilot.  It was thought that the aircraft might too complicated to be flown, even with experienced pilots.

But the military wasn’t about to give up a great airplane without trying to solve the complexity problem.  The solution was a checklist, and they’ve become mainstays of aviation at all levels.  (I think that even Han Solo and Chewbacca used checklists when flying the Millennium Falcon.)

TCM has a whole riveting chapter on the “miracle on the Hudson,” when a USAirways jet was landed on the Hudson River with no casualties after the engines were knocked out by a flock of geese.  The pilot, “Sully” Sullenberger was considered merely modest when he said that that the fortunate outcome was a result of teamwork, but as Gawande shows, it truly was a team effort—and checklists had a lot to do with the miraculous results. 

Effective checklists have to be short enough that they won’t be ignored, and they have to hit the salient points, which means a lot of experimentation.  I loved reading about how Gawande and his team devised checklists for operating theaters and the adjustments that were made after testing.

The bottom line on The Checklist Manifest is that A) checklists can be incredibly valuable, and B) people often hate to use them.  A successful investor on Wall Street uses a checklist when evaluating potential buys, and does very well. He’s made his list widely available, but virtually no one else uses it.  There is something about the boring routine of checklists that makes it easy for attention to wander.  Some people feel checklists crush creativity and intuition, and they’re boring. 

Plus, experts who have spent years developing their skills don’t like to be told that they might miss a crucial step.  That’s why implementing the surgical checklists had to be a team effort.  Some of the surgeons surveyed sneered at the idea that checklists were needed in THEIR operating rooms.

Yet tellingly, when the same surgeons were asked if they would want checklists used if they themselves were being operated on, 93% said yes.  Because the checklists work. 

Gawande ends the book with an example of an operation he performed when he knows with absolute certainty that the checklist saved the life of one of his patients.  The point involved seemed so unnecessary that it was almost skipped, but Gawande and his team followed their own rules, and a life was saved.

If this is the sort of book you like, you’ll like this book. <g>  I have a fondness for well written essays whether they’re Atul Gawande, Barbara Kingsolver, or John Scalzi. 

The book got me thinking about checklists in daily life.  When I was the art editor of a small magazine in England in the old-fashioned days of paste-ups, every page had a checklist of items that must be looked at—headers, page numbers, photographs, etc.  A friend of mine always uses checklists when evaluating autistic children. 

Heck, a recipe is a form of checklist. Checklists can be really useful when packing for a journey so you don’t end up in Moscow with no winter coat.  (And yes, I know an absent-minded professor who did this because it wasn’t cold at home when he left. <G>)

So how do you feel about checklists as a tool of managing life’s complications?  Do you work in a field that uses them?  Do you think you might profitably apply them in some area of private life? 

And do you feel a deep sense of satisfaction when another item is ticked off on your to do list?  I certainly do!

Mary Jo

 

Cara Elliott

   Anne here, taking time out today to interview wench Andrea Pickens in her new incarnation as Cara Elliott.   As Andrea Pickens, she collected a swag of awards for her much beloved Signet Regencies, including a Romantic Times Career Achievement Award. Her Regency Historical "spy" series, starring the swashbuckling students of Mrs. Merlin's Academy for Select Young Ladies, also did very well, and she won the 2008 and 2009 Daphne Du Maurier Award for Best Historical Mystery/Suspense and a 2008 Holt Medallion Award of Excellence. 
  
Cara Elliot’s career launches with a trilogy about three unconventional female scholars who formed a bond of friendship through the weekly meetings of their Scientific Society. Each has an expertise in a certain field of science--and each has a slightly shady past that comes back to haunt them. The first book, TO SIN WITH A SCOUNDREL, hits the stands March 1. 
Anne:  So, Cara, why the new name?

 Cara: Well, I wish that I could regale you with some romantic story of being kidnapped by the Duke of Elliott, who found my wit and beauty utterly irresistible. However . . . 

The reason is a bit more pragmatic. As my publisher and I talked about this new series, they asked if I wouldn’t mind adding even more “heat” to my stories. I thought the idea was a good one, and we all decided that why not do something do something dramatic to mark the new direction. My last series was about a trio of swashbuckling females spies, so I liked the idea of peeling off the buckskin breeches and sliding into a slinky little silk dress. (Hey, don’t we all like getting a “makeover” from time to time!) 
 
 Anne: How is Cara Elliott different from Andrea Pickens?


 Cara: The books are, in a word, sexier than my past books. But I like to think that I’ve still kept the emotional depth and complexity that is really at the core of my writing. I love making my characters come alive through dialogue and humor, and I feel the added physical intensity adds yet another dimension. Now, don’t get me wrong, they are definitely NOT erotica, but upping the heat creates some fun fireworks between the heroes and heroines  

 Anne: Will Andrea Pickens still write books?  
 Cara: Never say never! But right now, I’m working on a new Cara Elliott trilogy.

(And since you are asking about books, I’ll also offer our readers an exclusive look at my very first book. As you can see, spelling has never been one of my strong suits. My family teased me for years about “horeses.”)

Anne: It's gorgeous, and "horeses" is quite a logical spelling, so pooh to teasing families.  I love the premise for the new series. I'm a big fan of "opposites attract" books and in each book of this trilogy you pair a serious, scholarly heroine with a bad-boy hero. In the first book your heroine, Lady Ciara Sheffield is a reclusive widow known for her scientific scholarship, in the second book, the heroine is an expert in ancient antiquities and the third heroine has spent most of her life sailing to exotic ports around the globe, acquiring an expertise in botany.
These sound like serious, clever and interesting women. It's such a refreshing change. What made you choose to write about this kind of heroine?

Cara: I really like writing about people who are both strong and vulnerable. The idea of creating women who were very confident intellectually, but very unsure of themselves emotionally was very intriguing. We all have strengths and weaknesses, and how we learn to balance those conflicting elements is, to me, an integral part of the human experience 

And I also felt that unconventional heroines fit the Regency era very well. It was a time of tumultuous change. Radical new ideas were clashing with the conventional thinking of the past. People were questioning the fundamentals of society, and as a result they were fomenting changes in every aspect of life. For example, you had Beethoven composing emotional symphonies, Byron composing wildly romantic poetry about individual angst, J.M.W. Turner dabbling in impressionistic watercolors and Mary Wollstonecraft writing the first feminist manifestos.  (That's her portrait on the right.)

I remember seeing a museum exhibit several years ago called “Romantics & Revolutionaries,” which featured a selection of Regency portraits from the National Portrait Gallery in London. I was riveted by the women represented. They were artists, poets, scientist, explorers—but what they all had in common was the courage to defy convention and pursue their passions. I knew right then that I wanted to write a series that would somehow capture their spirit.

Anne:  It sounds wonderful. Tell us about your hero Lucas Bingham, the Earl of Hadley -- what drives him. Did you fall in love with him as you wrote?

Cara: I have to admit, I have a real soft spot in my heart for Lucas, and he ended up being one of my favorite heroes. He’s a charming rake who cheerfully admits to having no interest in anything but sybaritic pleasure. But at heart, he’s far more sensitive than he cares to admit, and as his best friend Jack says, he simply needs a challenge to bring out his better nature.

Anne: I'm fond of a charming rake, myself, and  I'm looking forward to meting your Lucas. Did you have to do much research for these books?

  Cara: Why I picked scientists is beyond me—I was absolutely hopeless in math and science in high school! (But hey, that is one of the joys of writing fiction—you get to be the fairy princess or the brilliant chemist.) That said, I certainly didn’t want to embarrass myself by showing my ignorance, so I really did do some research on medicinal plant substances, which figure in the story. Some ornithology also comes into play, so again, I found myself doing some basic reading on the subject. (The history of bird-watching in England is quite fascinating.) But I assure you that I’m not going to be applying to vet or med school anytime soon.

Anne:  Huntress reviews called it "a magnificently compelling read!"  What do you love about this book?

Cara: Well, I know it may sound like a trite PR sound bite, but I really do love the chemistry between Ciara and Lucas. They are both wary of showing emotion, for vastly different reasons, and how they teach each other to overcome their past doubts and fears was a story that I found very challenging and rewarding to write.

I also like the secondary love story, which involves a much older couple. All too often we only see heroes and heroines who are in their 20s or 30s. But love is important at any age!

Anne: I'm with you there -- I love secondary romances, too.  Along with all your writing projects, you are also co-teaching a seminar on historical romance at Yale this spring. So, tell us a little about what it’s like to go back to school. (That's Cara/Andrea and Lauren Willig at Yale in the pic below.)

  Cara: It’s been an amazing experience—I’m learning as much as our students. I’ve read the books on our syllabus for pleasure, but re-reading them with an eye to creating the weekly lesson plans and discussion questions has made me see the stories and characters in a whole new light. I have to analyze what I like and don’t like—and why. So it’s made me look at the art of writing a romance in a very rational, critical way. And it’s been interesting to see my own reactions to classics like  Woodiwiss’s “The Flame and the Flower” and Mc Naught’s “Whitney, My Love.” 

 

The class discussions have been so interesting too. Co-teacher and fellow romance author Lauren Willig and I are finding it absolutely fascinating to hear what the students think about what makes a hero and heroine, and what is the nature of love. Their ideas are fresh and original, and I’m constantly reminded of how wonderful it is to be around the energy and enthusiasm that comes from a spirited exchange of opinions. It’s exciting. And inspiring. I‘d say that we have a great new generation of romance readers—these kids are smart enough to know a good thing when they see it!

Visit Cara's website for more information.

 Anne: All the very best, Cara, on the launch of this series. It's been great to hear about the background. I can't wait to read the book.

Cara: Thanks, Anne, I've enjoyed the interview.

One lucky person will win a copy of Cara's new book by leaving a response to the following:
Cara enjoys creating offbeat heroines who aren't afraid to pursue their intellectual passions? Any brainy female from history—be it scientist, poet, artist, musician, etc—who has caught your fancy?  

The New New Thing

Wench Pat recently blogged about the stresses of promo and publicity to help keep a writerly career healthy.  In the 20 years I’ve been published, I’ve seen a lot of that.  Personally, I think a good part of the appeal of self-promotion is to achieve an illusion of control in our careers.  (Where believe me, few of us have a whole lot of control!)  So, because we love our books and want to be read, we often do dabble in the perilous waters of promotion.

The first big wave of promo that I recall was bookmarks.  Author Brenda Joyce made a huge splash by producing very high quality bookmarks featuring photos of buff, partially naked male bodies.  She got lots of publicity, people fought for the bookmarks, and she immediately was Someone in historical romance.  And we were off to the races!

Bookmarks alone won’t make a star—the stories have to be ones that make readers want to buy,   Soon so many bookmarks were being produced that the marketing impact of them dwindled to near zero.  Not that they aren’t useful—I usually have some printed up to show upcoming books.  It’s convenient to have a bookmark to hand someone when they express shock at meeting a Real Writer.  With the bookmark, a person can go to my website for more info and I don’t have to say much.  Very handy.

Have you ever bought a book from a bookmark?  I did once.  The bookmark quality was abysmal, but it was romantic science fiction, a subgenre I love.  I have many prettier bookmarks where I have no interest in seeking out the book because it’s not the sort that interests me.  It’s the content of the story that counts.

Which brings us to the new, new thing: book trailers and teasers (the latter being shorter.)  As always, those who get in on the ground floor do best with a new type of promotion.  I first heard of book trailers from Christine Feehan, who is a marketing genius as well as a prolific and much loved author.  I think the trailers helped raise her onto the bestseller lists (though again, you have to have the books to support the promotion!)  http://christinefeehan.com/

So now teasers are blossoming everywhere, and they may very soon be so common that they’ll be fairly useless.  Since I’m unquenchably curious, I decided to give this a try for the paperback release of The Marriage Spell (out May 29th, buy yours now!).  My fingers are crossed that it isn’t already too late for a teaser to have much impact. 

Some people have expressed interest in how teasers are done, so I’ll give you a quick rundown here. 

1) Decide on a budget.  These can be made for almost nothing with the right software (that combines sound and images) and sufficient talent, but most of us don’t have the skills or the time.  There are production companies that specialize in these, such as COS Productions, a pioneer in this area.  ( http://cosproductions.com/ )  The more acting and movement are involved, the more expensive the productions.  (Here is COS’s page with costs for different types of teasers: http://cosproductions.com/services.htm )  A production company will help not only in the making, but in the distribution, so there are advantages to going that way.

And for the clever and bold, here is an example of a very witty cheap alternative:  http://noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com/  Not being that clever, I worked with a publicist and COS.   There was collaboration between me, the publicist, and the producer at every stage.  (It’s been said that a writer needs only a pen, an artist needs only a brush, but a moviemaker needs an army.  This is true even with a one minute book teaser!)

2) The foundation of a good teaser is –surprise! –a good script.  What are the salient points of the story and characters?  What words will express what is intriguing and different about this particular story, and say why someone should go out and buy the book?  This is HARD—the shorter a piece of writing is, the more difficult. 

My 51 second teaser had a script of about 76 words.  Alternating between voice over and written phrases is one way to convey more information in a point/counterpoint way.  In those 51 seconds, the teaser needed to convey the setting, the essence of the characters, their conflict, and maybe a hint of the resolution.  I think it came out okay—if you go to my website ( www.maryjoputney.com ) the teaser is partway down the home page and will play automatically after it loads. 

3) Just as the script is the foundation, images are the fabric of the teaser.  Finding the right ones isn’t easy, though.  If you’re doing an expensive movie trailer with live action, you can hire actors (or strong arm friends and relatives) and rent costumes.  Otherwise, you’re stuck with stock photo sites, and it’s hard to find historical images in such places. 

For the hero of my teaser, that problem was solved easily: Jack Langdon is basically naked. <g>  But the model’s coloring and build were right, he had short brown hair that fit with Jack’s life as a military officer, and he had a pensive expression that worked for me.  (And yes, he was gorgeous. That didn’t hurt. )

The producer located most of the images and made good choices, but I didn’t like the original image for Abby, my healer/wizard heroine.  As written, Abby is tall and full figured, pleasant looking but not a raving beauty.  The producer did her best, but the image she found didn’t work for me—I thought the woman looked dull and unappealing.  The producer had done her best to find a female who fit the period, but I found the image unacceptable.  A pity we can’t use images from Regency movies, but because of licensing and permissions, that just isn’t practical.  (Though I can put one here safely enough, blogs being ephemeral. )

So I went hunting myself.   There are a ton of stock photo sites, but finding the right picture is difficult because you have to figure out search parameters that will bring you the kind of images you want.  I don’t envy the people who work at these sites—coming up with multiple search terms for every photo has to be monstrously difficult.  (I had help from two sister Wenches on this, fortunately!)

After much whining and snarling, I eventually found an image I liked.  The young woman was wearing a rather odd Jacobean page costume and holding a book and a glass of wine, but she also appeared pleasant and compassionate and sort of historical.  She’s looking to her right, as if she might have just learned that a dying army officer have been brought into her dining room.  That suited the story, so we went with her. 

4) Then we picked the music, using this site:   http://shockwave-sound.com/  You decide on  a style, then listen to clips.  Each clip comes in different lengths to suit different applications.  The site plays the music with enough voice over to make them unusable unless you pay the license fee.  (The photo sites also mark the pictures in some way so you can’t just use them without paying.  Which is only fair.)  I got lucky when I went to the music site: I picked Celtic, and liked the very first clip I listened to, a lilting Celtic harp tune. 

5) Based on my summary of the story and the approved script, the producer put together  a draft teaser which we all reviewed.  After corrections and changing pacing and finding the new image of Abby,  the teaser was approved and posted on a number of sites.  (This is another place where a production company earns its fee.)  There are a number of free sites where you can post these, including YouTube and MySpace and, of course, your own website.   The more places it’s posted, the better. 

Ideally, a teaser will reflect the nature of the book.  Pat Rice was doing a teaser at the same time I was, but even though we both had paranormal historicals, the feel is very different.  You can see hers at www.patriciarice.com   As with mine, the teaser is on the home page and will open automatically.  At COS’s site, you can see a ton of other teasers with lots of different flavors. 

Has it been worth the hassle?  Hard to say yet.  I’ve gotten one email from someone who loved the teaser, said it really made her want to buy the book, and she then loved the book.  Score one in the plus column! 

In another bit of cross-promotion, this Monday, June 18th, I’m  blogging over at http://plotmonkeys.com/  The Plot Monkeys are Leslie Kelly, Carly Phillips, Julie Elizabeth Leto, and Janelle Denison, and they’ve asked me some fun questions!  Maybe I’ll you there—

Mary Jo