Janet Mullany - Guest Post

Please welcome my guest, Janet Mullany!

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IMMORTAL JANE

He released her hands and stood. “Consider, Jane. You’ll marry some bore of a country gentleman who’ll kill you in childbed and who won’t want a bookish wife anyway. Perhaps you’ll stay a spinster and lose your bloom and die young of some disease they’ll find an easy cure for in a hundred years or so. Or you’ll see your sister die first.”

“Now you’re cruel.”

“No, it is the truth. But let us paint a happier picture for Miss Jane Austen. You write a few books that entertain your family and you win a little fame, perhaps even some money, while you live. And after, what then? Your books languish forgotten on dusty bookshelves and you are but a name on a binding that disappears with decay and time. You think your books offer you a chance at immortality?”

--Jane and the Damned

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Jane and the Damned isn’t a romance so it doesn’t have a traditional happy ending. It’s a historical urban fantasy with romance elements, part alternative historical with a bit of this, that, and the other, and some “spot the Austen novel” moments. But I think a characteristic of the HEA is that hero and heroine exist in a bubble of passion, which is why vampire romances are so hot (and, oh yeah, the physical perfection and great sex and all that stuff)—the eternal is now. Never mind that she’ll be looking at hip replacements while he is still a gorgeous 28-year-old sex god. Or, they’ll both be forever young and gorgeous vampires, the HEA distilled into eternity, the passage of time halted.

It’s a great fantasy.

But Jane Austen as a vampire? Neither of these endings would work and I had to create a scenario where her immortality would come with her books, even if at the age of 21 (the book is set in 1797) she was not at all sure she would ever be published. But I was following a trend, even though I hadn’t read a lot of vampire books, and I certainly hadn’t read any of the vampire classics, but I had watched hours of True Blood on HBO before getting tired of all those ripped perfect bodies and all that blood.

All those ripped perfect bodies and all that blood are what I define as Vampires Type A in popular culture. Vampires Type O are the evil ones. The ones mortals must fight to save the world, yadda yadda. And then there’s all this stuff about garlic and holy water and crosses (anyone remember that Roman Polanski movie with the Jewish vampire?—“Oy, lady, did you ever get the wrong vampire…”), not being able to cross running water, go out in daylight, use public transport (I’m making that up), and so on.

I had to come up with a vampire scenario that fit into my depiction of Georgian England, the age of reason and of both social and industrial revolution; the world that produced Jane Austen. I chose very selectively from vampire lore, although essentially the Damned are Type A—hot, desirable, and very fashionable. They’re the ton. Everyone wants to have sex with them or provide them with a dining experience. (These vampires do not feed—that is so vulgar. They dine.) The Prince of Wales (later the Prince Regent) loves to hang out with them and the newspapers are full of their scandalous behavior.

To tie the vampire elements to what we know of Austen’s life, I used another established literary trope, that Austen became what she was because of some lifechanging event: frequently a passionate love affair, a secret destroyed in the letters her sister Cassandra burned after her death. The family secret as I interpreted it was that Jane Austen was once a vampire and it influenced everything she wrote.

Do you agree with my vampire-HEA assessment? And what do you think of the current Austen-paranormal trend?

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Thanks, Janet! It was great to have you visit!

Be vewy quiet; I'm adding geeky detail!

There are various schools of thought about adding historical detail to fiction. Sometimes you want more detail, sometimes less; partly, that depends on the book's genre. For example, in a Tom Clancy novel such as The Hunt for Red October, there is a lot--a lot--of detail about nuclear submarines. But if you're reading that book, it's likely that one of the reasons is because of all that lovely, crunchy technical detail.

Historical novels need historical detail. But how about historical erotica? How much historical detail does there need to be?

drumroll

There should be as much historical detail as I want. And the geekier, the better.

If the details I choose to include are not what the reader expects, that's all to the good. Those details will stick better for being unusual. (cf. the picture of a horse wearing a gas mask.) And because they stick in the reader's mind, they're more useful for building up a picture of the time period, and also a picture that feels deeper and richer than whatever generalized ideas the reader might have had. (What does World War One mean to you? Trenches? There was fighting in the mountains of Italy, as well. And in Africa.) I feel anything that brings the reader more completely into the story is a good thing.

The more geeky the detail, the more that detail feels specific. Specificity is important; the more specific, the more vivid and immediate the image becomes in the reader's mind. You can say, there were birds. Or you can say, she remembered the poignant cries of bitterns and the song of reed-warblers, and the occasional slow dignified silent soaring of a heron towards the far horizon.

The more specific the detail, the less often you have to use detail, and the more subtly you can use it.

Related Posts:

Historical Detail in Fiction.

Research: When to Stop.

Selling the Unusual Setting

This post was originally written for The Naughty Girls Next Door. Since then, I learned from author Michelle Styles in a comment to that post that Harlequin Mills & Boon has been seeking out unusual historicals, publishing one a month - so there's a market right there! You can check out her comment in more detail here.

Here's the original post:

And now for something completely different.

A different time period, I mean. Since I've been following author blogs and forums related to the romance genre, again and again I've encountered the notion that unusual historical settings are a hard sell. There's less talk about erotica; it's a smaller part of the market and doesn't always overlap; it's its own niche, and I think sometimes there's more freedom of setting in erotica than in romance.

My post today is not to be taken as the be-all and end-all on this issue. Mostly, I'm just thinking through strategies that might work. Keep in mind that my World War One novel, The Moonlight Mistress, is erotica, which as I mentioned might be an easier market for unusual settings. I have not yet sold a romance novel, so anything I say about the romance market is gleaned from observation and conversation.

Here are my thoughts on unusual settings in Romance. In romance, historical usually means Regency (often extended beyond the actual Regency period), Victorian, pre-Regency Georgian, a few French Revolution novels, and...not a lot else. There's a sprinkling of European medievals, usually set in England, and a few Westerns (America, usually post-Civil War), and a few others. I'm sure I'm missing some, and of course the periods and locations of the few books not set in eighteenth through nineteenth century England will vary according to market pressures and other things which I am not going to go into, since that isn't really the topic of this post.

My topic (finally she gets to it!) is how to make the most of the "unusual" period you've chosen. Bear in mind that none of my suggestions are guaranteed to work. If they were, I'd be selling them on television. My suggestions are just intended to help you to think about ways of selling your novel in a more holistic way than simply throwing it against the wall of Regencies over and over again.

If you're starting from scratch, I think the first step is to write the book. No, really. You're much better off trying to pitch something that's a little different if you already have it in hand. The editor can then see what the whole novel is like, and you can impress them with how cool it is and how relevant to today's world.

A simultaneous step is to know the market. Even if there's nothing else exactly like your novel out there, still be prepared to give examples of already-published similar works, not just books but movies or television series or comics, to give an idea of your novel's potential market viability. "Similar" might mean similar themes, a similar basic plot, or a similar sub-genre. For instance, you could compare your romantic suspense novel set during the Russian Revolution to one set during the French Revolution that features similar situations. Or compare your novel to a series of historical mysteries set during the Russian Revolution or some other revolution. Or even to a novel with similar themes set during the breakup of the Soviet Union. Knowing that there are similiarities will not only help you pitch the novel, if needed, but also will give you ideas as to how you might shape it to make it more marketable. (Yes, I said write to market! Those aren't naughty words!)

Third, you can set up a niche market for yourself. Perhaps you could write some short stories set in the time period and location of your choice. After you've sold a few of those, you can use them to demonstrate the possible viability of a longer project. At the least, you've made a little money from the short stories!

I'd welcome further ideas on this topic, so feel free to comment or tell me that my ideas would never work.

Research - When to Stop

I actually stole this topic from a discussion I read...somewhere, a while back. The question was, "when do you stop researching?" I have two answers.

My first answer is never. You never stop researching because everything you read or look at might eventually find its way into your fiction. If you stop researching, I think your stories can grow stagnant.

My second answer is to stop when you have what you need for the story. It's very tempting to read every book you can find, watch every documentary series in its entirety, read a whole decade's worth of newspapers on microfiche. And you can do that, if you have infinite time available to you, or are a really, really fast reader. But for most writers' purposes, all that isn't necessary; research should be secondary to story, or else no one will want to read your novel. Though they might use it as a research source....

I think there's a difference between research for its own sake and research for the sake of fiction.

There are two facets to knowing when you've done enough. One is that there are things the writer needs to know that the reader doesn't need to see. I think of a lot of that as preliminary research: reading general books on the time period, making notes of possible items of interest.

After that, specificity is key. (Yeah, I know, I say that a lot.) When I'm writing about World War One, it helps me to know the political background of the countries in which the story is set, but the reader is more concerned with the lives of my original characters, and the details that are related to them. I think of it as a matter of focus.

Research what you're going to use, as much as you can; I skim through books, marking necessary details with post-it notes, or cut and paste from websites into a single document. I try not to research small items until I know for sure I'm going to include them in the story; instead, I keep a list of details I need to check, so I can search for all of them at once, perhaps on a day when I'm not writing.

I have to admit, I am constantly reining myself in. I buy research books related to a current project that I know for a fact I have no time to read until the novel is finished. I don't recommend it. Unless your apartment is bigger than mine.

Related posts:

Historical Detail in Fiction.

Reading for the Writer.

Synergy in Writing and Research.

The Research Book Dilemma.

Contemporary Historical Resources Linkgasm

Here are a few links I've found useful in my historical research. These are all collections/archives of contemporary materials. Contemporary to historical periods, I mean.

Old Magazine Articles, edited by Matt Jacobsen. "OldMagazineArticles.com is a Los Angeles-based website; privately owned and operated, it is the effort of one old magazine enthusiast in particular who believes deeply that today's readers of history can learn a good deal from the old periodicals. It is a primary source website and is designed to serve as a reference for students, educators, authors, researchers, dabblers, dilettantes, hacks and the merely curious."

The Home Economics Archive at Cornell University contains full-text articles and books from 1800-1999.

The Life Magazine photo archive, covering from the 1860s through the 1970s.

The Early 1900s in Color. This was a blog post at Citynoise.org that features a collection of color photographs from around the world.

History as Fantasy

In many ways, writing historical fiction is like writing fantasy. And reading historical fiction is like reading fantasy.

In one genre, you have to look up a lot of tiny details to make the reader accept that the world they're reading about is real/true. In the other genre, you have to make up a lot of details to make the reader accept that the world they're reading about is real/true. In both cases, those details have to be sprinkled into the text in ways that make sense for the story and don't distract the reader from the story, either. In both cases, the details have to hang together.

Both genres have similar reading protocols, as well. Fantasy readers can lose their suspension of disbelief if some part of the fantasy world doesn't make sense to them. This will vary according to how critically the reader reads, or what story elements are more or less important for them.

Historical readers can lose their suspension of disbelief when a historical detail in the story is inaccurate. This varies according to the reader's historical knowledge; for instance, if you know a period very well, you might catch slips that a less-informed reader might miss. And some readers can accept slips, because historical details or period-appropriate diction are less important to them than the story as a whole. Occasionally, the reader might lose their suspension of disbelief because, even though the historical details are accurate, they do not believe in its accuracy because they believe it contradicts something else they know - and that, too, can be a problem of how details are used and presented, part of creating believable architecture for an imaginary world.

Worldbuilding techniques cross-pollinate.

Related post:
Historical Detail in Fiction.

Researching the 1970s - Gwynne Garfinkle Guest Post

Please welcome my guest, Gwynne Garfinkle!

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Researching the Jo Book

I recently completed the second draft of a novel about a soap opera actress in mid-1970s New York City who's haunted by the ghost of her best friend who died protesting the Vietnam War. (The working title of the book is Some Misplaced Joan of Arc, but through the writing process I've mostly referred to it as "the Jo book.") I already knew a lot about soap operas and the '60s-'70s anti-war movement before I began writing, and I'm not sure I realized just how much research I would need to do.

I was ten years old in 1975, and in some respects I remember the time period very well. Yet it is in many ways a different world (not to mention the fact that I spent that time in Los Angeles, not New York). When I was writing a scene in which my protagonist Jo goes to see the newly released Dog Day Afternoon, I assumed she could go to her neighborhood movie house--but research revealed that the film only screened in one (now defunct) Manhattan movie theater when it first opened: Cinema 1. A friend of mine with access to newspaper archives even found me a New York Times ad for Dog Day Afternoon that included showtimes! Cinema Treasures, an online guide to classic movie theaters, provided a lot of info on Cinema 1.

A number of historical events are referenced in my novel, notably the arrest and trial of Patty Hearst. The book Patty's Got a Gun: Patricia Hearst in 1970s America and the documentary film Guerrilla - The Taking of Patty Hearst were excellent resources on the media's portrayal of the Hearst case. Again, my friend with access to newspaper archives helped me with specific news items, and I was amazed to learn that the New York Times headline for Patty Hearst's guilty verdict was: "MISS HEARST IS CONVICTED ON BANK ROBBERY CHARGES." I made frequent use of The Vanderbilt Television News Archive, which contains detailed descriptions of U.S. national network news broadcasts--including commercials--going back to 1968.
For information about the movement against the Vietnam War, as well as other political activism of the '60s-'70s, Cathy Wilkerson's Flying Close to the Sun: My Life and Times as a Weatherman and Dan Berger's Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity were useful, as were the documentaries Rebels With a Cause and The Weather Underground.

As for the soap opera aspect of my novel, 1970s daytime dramas were produced in a very different way than they are today. Fortunately my friends Lara Parker (who played Angelique on Dark Shadows) and Rory Metcalf (who wrote for Ryan's Hope) answered my questions, as did Peter White, who played Linc on All My Children at just the time period of my novel. I also consulted biographies of soap opera actors and soap opera reference books, as well as Eight Years in Another World (a wonderful memoir by former Another World head writer Harding Lemay) and We Love Soaps, a great source of interviews and archival material.

A number of soap opera actresses have penned soap opera murder mysteries, from which I gleaned some behind-the-scenes information amid the dropping corpses. Books in this little subgenre include Louise Shaffer's All My Suspects and Eileen Davidson's Death in Daytime and Dial Emmy for Murder.

The other sources I used for Jo book research are too numerous to mention, but a few highlights include a 1976 NYC TV Guide, the 1975-76 Trans World Getaway Guide to NYC, the Mr. Pop Culture week by week archives, and a webpage of '70s toiletries advertisements, Stuck in the 70s. Sometimes a tiny, half-forgotten detail, like Love's Baby Soft or Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific, can help bring a scene--and the time period of a novel--to life.


Gwynne Garfinkle lives in Los Angeles. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Strange Horizons, Goblin Fruit, Aberrant Dreams, Space & Time, and the Clockwork Jungle Book issue of Shimmer. She is represented by Diana Fox of Fox Literary.

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Thanks, Gwynne!

Saskia Walker - Guest Post

Please welcome my guest, Saskia Walker!

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When I started out on my writing journey I used to fret about how the fantasy or paranormal elements of a story would mesh with the more everyday aspects. As writers we want our stories to flow seamlessly for the reader, and for them to accept what is way beyond the norm alongside the more rational elements.

This is a skill that my hostess has, in spades! In Victoria’s novel, The Duchess, Her Maid, The Groom and Their Lover, I found I accepted the more unusual aspects of the society she portrayed because the writing was so solid overall. For example, Victoria describes the Duchy palace, its furniture, art works, the costumes and surroundings, in such vivid detail that I readily accepted the more unconventional things that happen within this society. That is skilled world building.

A few years ago I took an online workshop by best-selling paranormal romance author Angela Knight. Angela was talking about how to give your paranormal characters life and make them leap off the page. When she had a question and answer session, I raised my concern about making the fantasy elements mesh, so that they are instantly acceptable to the reader. Her response was to research and write the real-world elements solidly. For example, if your hero is a police officer who is secretly a werewolf, it's his everyday police world you need to get right, and the reader will go with the rest because she/he will be so grounded in the character and the story.

That notion began to sink in for me, and I was able to look at the issue from a different viewpoint. It also meant I worried a bit less and focused on getting the groundwork right instead! I think I’m getting there, at least I hope so.

In my latest novel-length publication, Rampant, I had a lot of genre cross over to deal with, and it set up a number of “believability” challenges as a result. The story draws on the history of witchcraft in Scotland, and the very real persecution of those who were ousted as witches. The story is divided between a contemporary setting and a historical one, and in both settings several of the characters are secretly practising witchcraft. The rich paranormal folklore of Scotland and the history of persecution was something I was able to draw upon, as was my love of the natural world and the area I chose to set the story in, the East Neuk of Fife. What I had to mesh with that was my own world building, in particular, the magic.

To close, here’s an excerpt from a scene set in the historical world of Rampant. In this part of the book it was important to get the period and setting right, as well as the atmosphere of suspicion and persecution, in order to ground my story and give it weight. See what you think.

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The master is leading me into the forest. He waylaid me as I was on my way to pick summer berries and ordered me to leave my basket and to follow him here instead. His mood is not good. With one hand locked around my wrist he drags me alongside him, his handsome mouth tightly closed.

“Ewan, what is it? Whatever is the matter?”

He does not reply.

We follow the path to the place where the coven meet, but the brethren are not here with us now. It is just the two of us, and the master is like a stranger to me. His head is bare, his hat who knows where, and his necktie is askew. His hair is uncombed, and he looks as if he has barely slept.

Beneath the trees the scent is high for it rained heavily in the night, an early summer storm, and whilst it is fresh down by the harbor, up here in the trees the musky smell of damp undergrowth fills the air. The ground is muddy and the path is damp and slippery beneath my boots, sending me skittering on the path.

He does not look back, does not seem to notice. Why is he bringing me here now, and why does he not speak? My heart beats hard in my chest, for I have a dreadful bad feeling about this.

“Speak with me,” I plead, “tell me what it is that you need. I promise I will do whatever you want, if only would look my way and speak to me.”

Still he does not answer. Instead, he drags me even faster across the ground, intent on some purpose known only to himself. I can barely keep up, my footsteps stumbling in his wake, my skirts snagging on brambles. Then I see our own place up ahead, the clearing where our coven meets. The circles of rocks mark the five points where we have set our fires, and the earth is burnt from our rituals.

He stops walking and pulls me up short in front of him, strong hands wrapped round my wrists. I have to stand on my toes and stretch, for he seems determined that I look him directly in the eye.

“Feel my ire,” he urges, “know it in your soul.”

I do feel it, I see it and I feel it, a churning vat of pain that he wishes to share with me. Betrayal, there is betrayal there too, amidst the rage in his expression.
“I see it, my beloved master, but I do not understand.”

“I thought you had more sense, Annabel McGraw. You are fickle, as unruly as a bored child. I scorn you for wasting precious time, for inviting trouble upon the coven by dallying with villagers when you should be honing your skills.” He kicks half burnt logs out of his way before he pushes me down in the ashes.

My body hits the ground, my spirit fast feeling what he wants me to know—humility, shame. He is showing me how he could break me. That I could be as easily fated by him as a woodland creature or a captured bird that he would sacrifice for some greater purpose.

Clumsily I sprawl, charred wood and rocky earth rough beneath my back, my left leg twisted beneath me. As his chosen woman amongst the coven, I can think of no greater shame that he could bestow upon me.

I try to rise up on my hands, my emotions unsteady and my thoughts running this way and that as I try to understand his actions. I resent him for this. “Why do you try to shame me this way?”

He drops to his knees beside me and shoves me to the ground with his hand hard against my chest. I cry out when the rocks and stones dig into my back. His eyes blaze and his lips are drawn back from his teeth. His anger is overwhelming. I feel it pumping violently from the hand he has splayed at the base of my throat where the skin is bare. His palm is so hot it makes me squirm for fear of being branded by him, a demon’s mark that I know he has the power to bestow. And yet it makes me lusty, too, for he is so handsome when his immense magical power burns in his eyes this way.

“You have been foolish, risking our secret, risking so much for a roll with an oaf of a fisherman.”

Was that it? That he is jealous of Irvine? I cannot fathom it at first, for he takes lovers where he chooses and it has not bothered him when I have done the same. But I am delighted, too, and I begin to see how I can turn this.

“Why do you do this?” he demands. “Is it not enough that together we could own all of the magic in Scotland?” He closes his fist around the air in front of my face, and I see the immense light that glows from within it.

I watch, secretly delighted by his actions. I am almost gleeful that his need for me has driven him to express himself in forbidden magical enchantments. He opens his fist and the light swirls out into the atmosphere, sparkling with colors, before darting away into the trees…

If you’d like to read another excerpt from Rampant, you can do so here.
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Thanks, Saskia! (Also, I am blushing because you liked The Duchess, etc. Thank you so much!)

Why Not Twentieth Century Historicals?

Why are so few (print) romance novels set in the twentieth century?

If you go to a bookstore and look at the section labelled "Romance," certain things are there and certain things are not. With the exception of occasional outliers like Harlequin's line of 20th century "decade" books-- a line of categories that some bookstores didn't carry, and which was then closed down--historicals seem to include only a few periods.

The highest proportion of historicals set in Britain and Europe are set in the 19th century, with the Regency era far surpassing the earlier Georgian period (technically, Regency is still Georgian, I know--but in Romance the distinction seems to be made that way). Medievals seem to be a much smaller slice of the market, as are Victorians. Sometimes, you get something set in the Renaissance, mostly in Italy, or in France during the Revolution. (There are always exceptions, and I love exceptions, so please tell me your favorites!)

American history seems to consist of the Civil War and the "western expansion" era of the late 19th and sometimes very early 20th century. I have seen some paranormal authors, for example Susan Krinard, write books that take place at least partly on the US East Coast in the 19th century, but that isn't common. Occasionally someone writes a book set in the American Revolution, usually including some intersection between Americans and British. Suzanne Brockmann got away with some WWII content mixed with contemporary in some of her Navy SEALS romance/suspense novels, but I note that she's stopped doing that some time ago; her current series is all contemporary. And that is mostly it, at least that I can think of.

Why is this? Who decided? Are more current time periods--the 1920s through, say, the 1970s--seen as less interesting? Are writers simply not producing books set in those periods, or is it that publishers don't want them? Have they tried them, and they don't sell? Is it just too weird for people to read about a period they lived through, or that their parents lived through? Is the recent past too close to us, and does it disrupt the fantasy aspects of the story? Do we know too much that's disturbing about our recent history?

Aside from all those issues, it may be part of the problem that one researches a romance partially by reading other romances to see the shape of the genre, and there are few predecessors for romances set during more recent historical periods (what about novels contemporary to those periods, from the 1960s and 1970s, for example?).

Or could it be the fault of readers that 20th century historicals aren't popular? Regular readers of, say, Regencies, acquire a basic grasp of that time period. In relation to periods in which one never lived, what if the majority of readers don't want to learn about a new time period, since they're happy in the one they've chosen?

Since we're well into the twenty-first century now, perhaps it's time to think more about writing books set in the twentieth.

Today Through History

One of the reasons I most enjoy researching and writing about World War One is that it's a time period rich in issues that interest me. For instance, in Great Britain during World War One, woman suffrage was still being debated, and sex between two men was still a crime. These gender issues are still relevant today, as women continue to fight for true equality in education and employment, and the right to marry a same-sex partner (or even to have such a partner) remains illegal in many countries.

Though The Moonlight Mistress is an erotic novel, and a pulpish adventure, I still wanted to offer views of these issues seen through different lenses and incorporate them into the novel's themes, especially through my use of werewolves as a paranormal element.

For those reasons, I included several female characters who were on the edges of acceptability in 1914. One is a professional chemist. Unable to obtain an academic position because of her gender, she works as a nurse, stealing research time when she can find it. Another, unable to make a living at her chosen trade, disguises herself as a man. Both of these women, in taking on roles separate from what their society expects of them, mirror the shapechanging werewolves in the story.

Another subplot follows a gay man who longs for acceptance even more than he longs for love. He cannot know if the object of his affections shares his preferences, and if he reveals himself the consequences could be dire. Another character is slowly coming to terms with the idea that he is bisexual. It's easy for the present-day reader to identify him as such, but the character doesn't know if anyone else like him exists in the world. They, too, can be seen as mirrors of the werewolves: hiding in plain sight, always looking for others of their kind.

The werewolves can stand in for any outsider, whether societal outcast or stranger in a strange land. The reader, hopefully, will find her own resonance in the story.

Science fiction, often ostensibly about the future, offers a truer picture of the writer's world. Historical fiction, too, doesn't represent the past as it happened, but the past as we, looking back, see it. The view is distorted by our past experiences and opinions, not only those we consciously notice but those that are so ingrained that we don't even think to question them.

As a writer I can't control, for the most part, what interpretations readers bring to my stories. Too much happens in the gaps between what I've written and the reader's personal experiences. The two mingle together and give a different picture to each reader. The best I can do is offer the reader as much fodder for the subconscious as I can possibly manage.

Werewolves in WWI? Why Not?

This post was written for Harlequin's Paranormal Romance Blog.

For The Moonlight Mistress, I combined a historical novel with paranormal elements. As you probably know already if you read this blog regularly, the book is set during the early days of World War One, and begins with a romance between Lucilla, an English chemist and nurse, and Pascal, a French scientist. They're trapped in Germany when war is declared and must escape together.

I could have gone from there to write a straightforward wartime adventure novel, but instead I established that Pascal is only in Germany because he's investigating rumors of a werewolf held captive by an amoral scientist. Soon, two werewolf characters are introduced, one a soldier and the other a spy, and their role in the war and their relationship is woven into the novel's main plot.

I love historical romance, but I love historical science fiction and fantasy even more, particularly when there are romantic elements. To me, mixing genres is a way to avoid the same-old, same-old of historical romance.

For example, the plot of a historical romance might be: hero and heroine meet, family/money/status/scandalous past/amnesia keep them apart, then they must resolve their issues to be brought together romantically. For me, those plot complications and their resolutions become more compelling if the family issue is that a werewolf needs to marry another werewolf or she can't have werewolf children, or if the scandalous past results from the heroine not being human and not having human standards of behavior. Not knowing what to expect makes the journey more fun.

I've been asked, more than once, why World War One? Why werewolves?

I'm fascinated by World War One and the period immediately before and after. It might be because I grew up reading Dorothy Sayers' Peter Wimsey mysteries, or might be because my school history classes rarely spent much time on those decades, and that made me more curious rather than less. Regardless, I have several shelves of reference books on the period and love to read about it even when I'm not writing it. Also, I rarely find fiction, especially romance, set during World War One. If I want some, I have to write it myself. So I did!

For me, World War One is a period when large parts of the world underwent a major change. One of the themes of that change, in my opinion, is technology and the way humans relate to it. In that war, technology was used for violence: massive artillery, airplanes, tanks, poison gas. Humans used technology to kill each other in mass numbers.

I chose werewolves as my paranormal element because werewolves are often used, thematically, to symbolize or represent nature and the vital life force of wild creatures. Wolves are hunters, killing to eat; humans at war are killing for reasons distant from immediate survival. For that reason, I felt werewolves were a good contrast to the technology theme.

In particular, my werewolves are rare and growing more so. What happens when nature suffers at the hands of technology? What happens when a scientist tries to bend nature to his will, in order to gain power over other people? How do the goals of the humans and the werewolves come into conflict? I enjoyed these questions so much that I would like to write another novel with the same themes one day.

Also? Werewolves are sexy. There's something about all that animal energy that makes them appealing – think Wolverine in the X-Men comics – he's not a werewolf, but he has a similar appeal. I wanted my characters to have some of that energy, and at the same time to be more like people to whom I'd be drawn in real life.

One of the things I love most about real-world wolves is that they are playful. They play with each other, and they will even play with other species, such as crows. I included that element by having my male werewolf be a bit of a joker. The female werewolf is much more serious because of her past experiences, but that aspect of play is one of the things that most attracts her to her future partner. I incorporated verbal banter into most of their dialogue and of course into their sex scene, which takes place in human form. For them, being able to talk to each other is an added level of intimacy. When one of them is in human form and the other in wolf form, play is still an element of their relationship; one teases the other.

As a way of making the werewolf characters less like ordinary humans, I used their senses of smell. Scent affects their perceptions and feelings, including their relationship with each other. When they meet, they can immediately tell that they are both werewolves, and that affects the ways in which they interact. They're human, but they're also something more.

Finally, werewolves are an important element of the genre-mixing I mentioned back at the beginning of this post. They're the unexpected element. A novel about World War One has lots of available conflict for the characters. Any reader can predict what might happen to a group of characters who go off to war. So why not add werewolves, and see what happens?

Regencies and Amish Romance

What about the Regency Romance appeals, in the past and now? Here are some thoughts. I'm not sure I entirely agree with myself on every point, if that makes sense...but I'm going to ramble on anyway, going one way and the other.

I think there's a difference between historical romance novels that are set during the Regency period and the Regency Romance, a sub-genre that I've heard people say originates with the novels of Georgette Heyer. When I speak of the Regency Romance, I really mean the novels published by Signet from 1974 through 2006 and those that are similar to them. (Here's a page with authors and titles and here's another.)

The Signet Regencies are about the length of category romances. The vast majority, like Georgette Heyer's novels, have no explicit sex and instead focus tightly on the courtship between the heroine and hero. The historical events going on around the couple aren't usually deeply explored unless there's some reason for the couple to be involved in the event. I don't remember many where that happened (but if you know of examples, please comment!). An example might be Carla Kelly's One Good Turn, in which the heroine survived terrible events following the battle of Badajoz. The reader's given enough information to know what happened to the characters in relation to the battle, but the battle's root causes and results aren't explored in depth because it isn't necessary for the romance.

Thus, if you're reading a Regency, you don't have to know much about the details of the period to follow the story, so long as you understand the basic concept that courtship was constrained by etiquette. Distinctions of social class, for example, might be important to the story if the hero owns a factory and the heroine is the daughter of a duke. The writer gives historical detail to the reader that is sufficient for the story's purpose, just as when a writer presents elements of worldbuilding in a fantasy novel. But the historical element is secondary to the Regency Romance's story. For the most part, these novels do not go beyond parks and drawing rooms.

I could argue that the historical detail in a historical novel is always secondary to the story, otherwise it would be nonfiction. But in the case of the Regency Romance, I think the historicity is deliberately seconded to the courtship. Historical detail is added value, but the constrained courtship story could very easily be told in any number of settings.

So why Regency? Is it because Georgette Heyer made the period popular? Because the constrained social roles of the characters are comforting/reassuring because the reader thus knows what to expect? Or because the men might be wearing really tight pantaloons? What do you think?

And now, the "traditional" Regency Romance is rare. These novels had a good market for quite a while. Were they replaced by historical romances set during the Regency, which because of longer length had more scope for a wider range of relationships, including sexual relationships? The continued success of Mary Balogh, and an influx of excellent new writers such as Tessa Dare, argue that the historical period remains popular. It's just the format that has shifted from category to single-title.

But I think there is still an audience for stories similar to the traditional Regency romance. I am thinking about the current interest in Amish romances, here discussed in the Wall Street Journal and Time Magazine and The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. These novels have romance without showing explicit sexual relationships, and show life constrained by etiquette. Are these popular among non-Amish readers because the setting feels like Fantasy, another world that one can imagine is simpler than ours?

Incidentally, reprints of Georgette Heyer's work are proliferating right now. Is she taking back the market she founded?

Edwardian/Belle Epoque Research Links

The Edwardian period in England officially lasted from 1901-1910 but is often extended through the end of World War One in 1918; another term, more applicable to the rest of the Europe, is La Belle Epoque, which stretches slightly longer. A great place to start reading about the period is the blog Edwardian Promenade. Be sure to check out the links.

Simple factual research is all well and good, but for story purposes, I think the little details are more important: what people wore, what they ate, what they did for fun.

Internet Archive on Great Britain, 1901-1910.
London Times Archive.
New York Times Archive, 1851-1980.

Victorian and Edwardian Photographs. This site has a huge range of photographic portraits that, to me, inspire a great many character ideas.

The Museum of Childhood has a section on Edwardian Lives from childhood on.

An enlightening article on womens' fashion 1900-1909. Check out fashions in clothing here, here, and here. A useful fashion links page.

This new site looks increadibly useful: East London Theatre Archive, which I found via Great War Fiction.

An overview of kitchens and cooking and some recipes. More recipes can be found here, divided by genre.

Neat information from World's Fairs, 1901-1910 at the National Fairground Archive, that I've always thought would make an original background for a novel.

Finally, though the design is cluttered, this site gives lyrics and/or sheet music and listenable links to a number of period music-hall tunes. For classical music of the period (and others), some available for download, visit the music library at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

And for fun as well as research, Suffrage on Stage. "Woman suffrage is the reform against nature. Look at these ladies sitting on the platform. Observe their physical inability, their mental disability, their spiritual instability and general debility! Could they walk up to the ballot box, mark a ballot, and drop it in? Obviously not. Let us grant for the sake of argument that they could mark a ballot. But could they drop it in? Ah, no. All nature is against it. The laws of man cry out against it. The voice of God cries out against it--and so do I."
--Marie Jenney Howe, "An Anti-Suffrage Monologue"

Related posts:

Basic Historical Research Online.

Historical Detail in Fiction.

Synergy in Writing and Research.

Cherry-Picking Time

An editor to whom I'd previously sold reprints contacted me last week about possibly contributing to a new anthology.

Immediately, this made my heart sing. It sang even more when I found out I could write any subgenre of "hot romance" that I chose. Whee! Ideas ideas ideas! I've been missing writing short fiction, and the freedom it offers to experiment.

As I often do, I went promptly to my friends on LiveJournal, where my account allows me to post polls. I created a poll offering every story element that appealed: cross-dressing, circuses, space opera, the Crimean War, time travel, World War II, dystopias, cuisine, superheroes. After cross-dressing, the top choice was the Crimean War.

I adore writing things set in World War One, but I've also had a desire to set something during the Crimean War, mainly because I know little about it. I mean, there's Florence Nightingale and there's the Battle of Balaclava and the Charge of the Light Brigade. Half a league, half a league, / Half a league onward, / All in the valley of Death / Rode the six hundred. I want to go a little deeper than that.

Writing a story is a great excuse to learn more. I have a couple of books already, and until now they've been languishing unread. I ordered two more almost immediately. I'm already pondering where in the war to set my story - Balaclava seems an obvious choice.

But then there's the second element. Time travel was also a top choice. I've never done time travel. One of my favorite science fiction novels is Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, and though I don't aspire to anything so complex, I love the way she integrated time travel and scholarly study; Kage Baker's In the Garden of Iden has time-traveling agents as well, whose motives are more economic. Regardless of what I choose, time travel and a major event like the Battle of Balaclava would make perfect sense. And those two ideas are already percolating rapidly in my brain.

Whee!

Related posts:

Synergy in Writing and Research.

The Research Book Dilemma.

My Top 16 Romance Novels

I'm exactly one month late posting my sixteen favorite romance novels, but, well...here they are anyway, in random order. And it was really hard and made me very sad, but I did it for you.

I limited myself to books published as romance, not science fiction or fantasy or mystery that included a romance in the story. I allowed one book per author. One of my requirements was that I'd read the book more than once and plan to read it again in future; the re-read requirement meant most of the newer books I've loved, by new authors or by old favorite authors, didn't make the list.

My List:

1. Judy Cuevas, Dance
2. Suzanne Brockmann, Frisco's Kid
3. Carla Kelly, Summer Campaign
4. Jennifer Crusie, Anyone But You
5. Liz Carlyle, No True Gentleman
6. Loretta Chase, Lord of Scoundrels
7. Laura Kinsale, The Shadow and the Star
8. Janet Mullany, Dedication
9. Marjorie Liu, Shadow Touch
10. Nita Abrams, The Exiles
11. Connie Brockway, As You Desire
12. Mary Jo Putney, River of Fire
13. Tracy Grant, Daughter of the Game
14. Jo Beverley, Christmas Angel
15. Mary Balogh, The Notorious Rake
16. Anna Campbell, Untouched

Amazon links for your convenience:
Dance
Frisco's Kid
Summer Campaign
Anyone But You
No True Gentleman
Lord of Scoundrels
The Shadow and the Star
Dedication
Shadow Touch
The Exiles
As You Desire
River of Fire
Daughter of the Game
Christmas Angel
The Notorious Rake
Untouched

Real People as Fiction - Linkgasm #3

Timmi Duchamp on representing history in fiction, particularly using real historical personages in fiction. Here's Part Two.

Are novelists entitled to use real-world characters? by Guy Gavriel Kay, an essay for The Guardian that's linked from the above post.

This also brings to mind Real Person Fiction, which is not at all a new practice - for example, the Brontë juvenalia includes historical figures and variations thereof.

How about Reverse Historical Fiction? (via Creating Van Gogh) "[Shumaker]'s story is an epistolary one in which a literature professor describes the troubled history of a (deceased) colleague's doctoral dissertation, one that the colleague was forced to drop. The long and short of it is that while a graduate student, this man discovered that Huckleberry Finn was no fictitious character but a real person who wrote down his life story and gave it to Samuel Clemens, merely hoping for assistance in getting the memoir published."

And these sound interesting as well: The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte and The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen by Syrie James.

I haven't read either of those books yet, so here's a review of The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte at the BronteBlog. Review of The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen at Bookstack.

Here's another interesting post: Redefining Historical Fiction, Amazon-style at Reading the Past.

Then there're cartoon characters of a real person that take on a life of their own, in this post from Henry Jenkins, back in April 2008: My Life as a Cartoon Character.

Sometimes, the details of reality just won't work, no matter how hard you try. 2D Goggles: The Style Edition.

And on a completely different note, How Being a Theater Geek Improved My Writing by Barbara Barnett.


Linkgasm 1.

Linkgasm 2.

Time Well Bent - ed. Connie Wilkins

I don't have a story in this anthology, but a friend of mine edited it and others wrote stories for it, and I'm really looking forward to reading it!

Time Well Bent: Queer Alternative Histories
ed. by Connie Wilkins

We have always been here. For as long as there's been such a thing as sex, alternate sexual identities have been a fact of life. So why have we been so nearly invisible in recorded history and historical fiction? Editor Connie Wilkins, a Lambda Literary Award finalist, has assembled fourteen stories that span the centuries-from ancient times to the Renaissance to the modern era-and explore alternate versions of our past. Their queer protagonists, who bend history in ways dramatic enough to change the world and subtle enough to touch hearts and minds, rescue our past from invisibility, and affirm our place and importance throughout all of history, past, present, and future.

Table of Contents:

Introduction by Connie Wilkins
A Wind Sharp as Obsidian by Rita Oakes
The Final Voyage of the Hesperus by Steven Adamson
Roanoke by Sandra Barret
A Marriage of Choice by Dale Chase
The High Cost for Tamarind by Steve Berman
A Spear Against the Sky by M P Ericson
Sod 'Em by Barry Lowe
Morisca by Erin Mackay
Great Reckonings, Little Rooms by Catherine Lundoff
Barbaric Splendor by Simon Sheppard
Opening Night by Lisabet Sarai
A Happier Year by Emily Salter
The Heart of the Storm by Connie Wilkins
At Reading Station, Changing Trains by C. A. Gardner

Lethe Press, October 2009
ISBN: 9781590211342
Paperback, 184 pages
Retail price: $15.00

Time Well Bent: Queer Alternative Histories

The Intricacies of Marriages of Convenience

I may have mentioned once or twice (ahem) how much I love the "marriage of convenience" plot. I recently finished reading one of Mary Balogh's recent novels, First Comes Marriage, which I really enjoyed, and which also got me thinking again about why I find that plot so rewarding, particularly in historical romance.

Obviously, you can generate a lot of plot tension simply from two strangers having to work together to accomplish a goal. In the Marriage of Convenience, those goals can vary. For instance, the goal might be simply to create a child who will be heir to a title; or for the hero to provide financially for a woman for whom he feels responsible; or for the heroine and hero to extricate themselves from a social disaster.

You can separate those three situations into two general types that are subtly different. In one version, the simple act of marriage solves a problem (averting social scandal); the resulting marriage then becomes the problem to be solved, in any one of a variety of ways. In another version, the marriage itself begins as a problem that must be solved - the couple is married, but how to do they go about life in order to achieve their goals? What must they give and give up to their partner? What process do they follow, what series of problems and their solutions? Also, occasionally an outside conflict is introduced, that must be solved along with the marriage conflict.

I'm not sure yet if these distinctions are useful ones to make when reading a Marriage of Convenience novel, but they might be useful when thinking about how to plot one. At base, any Marriage of Convenience plot is more about the period after the wedding than the wedding itself. But the period before the wedding might also be useful to create thematic or character issues that can then be strengthened, deepened, once the tension is increased (once the two characters are bound by law).

Another issue I'm considering is the previous relationship. Did the hero and heroine know each other before the wedding? Even if they've known each other for years as, say, friends or neighbors, there must be essential elements that are not known, and I think those elements would need to be dramatically significant (hence the popularity of Secret Angst). Without some mystery, there can be no discovery. If the couple are new to one another, for instance the aristocrat who marries the country mouse vicar's daughter, revelations of character might need to proceed at a different pace.

I've rambled on long enough for now, but I'm going to continue to think about the subtleties of this type of plot.

Related post: Why I Love the Marriage of Convenience Plot.