Book series

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First impressions on WIP Wednesday

 

We try to make an emotional connection between our protagonists and our readers as soon as we can in the story. We also need to show the character flaws that make our protagonists interesting. Balancing these two, especially when the characters have personality aspects or life histories that are going to upset some readers, is crucial. So we try to show them doing something nice early on. I’ve just been reading a book where the hero is a drunken cad when he is 20, and frightens heroine, who is only 15. He goes on to turn his life around, and comes back to court her. Ella Quinn manages the empathy by starting the story before he got drunk, making the reasons for his state of mind clear. You could say the story has two sets of first impressions — those the protagonists make on the reader, and those they make on one another.

How about you? What first impression do your characters make? Pick an excerpt that shows the first appearance of the hero or heroine, or what one of them thinks about the other on first meeting.

Mine this week is a newly written passage from To Wed a Proper Lady, which comes immediately after the rescue of the little boy that has already been published as part of The Bluestocking and the Barbarian (you can read it here).

“Oh my,” Felicity said. Sophia had not even noticed her until she spoke. All of Sophia’s attention was on the rider. Oh my, indeed.

“So that is what all the gossip is about,” her sister added. “No wonder he has ruffled the feathers of the biddies and the sticklers. He looks very exotic, does he not? And yet, he speaks like one of us and has the most elegant manners.”

“We must be glad he was there, and in time to help,” Sophia said, struggling to keep her voice calm when the thud of her heart must be audible throughout the village. “Tommy might have been badly hurt.” She managed to drag her eyes away from the retreating horsemen. Undoubtedly, Lord Elfingham had forgotten her already. He did not look back.

She turned towards the Children’s Sanctuary. Felicity fell into step beside her, still talking.

“I must say, he was not at all what I expected. To hear Hythe, one would think him a wild barbarian, uncouth and fierce, without manners or education.”

Sophia repressed a snort with some difficulty. “Hythe has been listening to the wrong Haverford. Our Godmama knew Lord Sutton, his father, when he was only a third son, before he left England to seek his fortune. Aunt Eleanor says that Lord Sutton was married to a Persian princess, and his children were raised as royalty, as well as English ladies and gentlemen. They were, Aunt Eleanor says, given the finest education.”

“His Grace of Haverford has forbidden Her Grace and Lord Aldridge to attend any event at which they might meet Lord Sutton or any of his children. Is that because she and Lord Sutton were once acquainted?”

Sophia knew that look on Felicity’s face. With the least encouragement, she would be interrogating the dowagers and the old maiden aunts, and increasing the storm of scandal around Lord Sutton and his family even further.

“Hythe says that the Duke is incensed at the dilution of another duke’s blue blood.” Felicity gave a little skip at the horror of it all. Hythe did say that, but Sophia was sure Haverford’s virulent enmity was more personal than a distaste for miscegenation.

“Apparently, Haverford believes that English dukes should marry only English ladies of an appropriate rank,” Sophia replied. “Foreign princesses need not apply.”

“If, in fact, Sutton did marry the foreign princess.” The scandalous nature of the conversation was delighting Felicity.

Sophia looked back over her shoulder. The horsemen were visible in the distance, just cresting the hill beyond the village. One of them had stopped — his horse gleaming golden in the sun. It was foolish to think she could feel his intense gaze from this distance. She couldn’t even see his features. But she did see one hand raised in salute before he wheeled the horse to follow his companions.

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Tea with memories of Eleanor

 

Now for something different — the scene is about the Duchess of Haverford, but she only makes a brief appearance. This is an excerpt from the rewrite of what used to be The Bluestocking and the Barbarian. In To Wed a Proper Lady, the Earl of Sutton meets the woman he once loved at a ball, and afterwards thinks about the days of their youth.

The muttering of the assembled guests swelled and then stopped abruptly when the Duke of Haverford crossed the floor, and stopped in front of the Earl of Sutton.

Sutton inclined his head, his face impassive.

Haverford sneered and turned on his heel. Sighting his wife at one side of the room, talking to their hostess, he marched twelve paces and spat out, “Lady Finch, that man is an imposter. The duchess and I will not visit any home where he and his devil-spawn are welcome. Duchess!” He beckoned to Aunt Eleanor, as Sophia called her godmother, and stalked off up the stairs.

The duchess followed, hesitating for a moment as she passed Sutton. Their eyes met. Sophia could have sworn that his had a question. If so, the duchess didn’t answer. She hurried up the stairs after her husband. Most of the room watched the earl’s party crossing to Lord and Lady Finch, but Sophia continued to watch the duchess, and may have been the only person who saw her stop at the top of the stairs, to look after the earl.

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“It went well,” Georgie proclaimed, once Drew and the girls had retired and only the older members of the household remained to consider the evening. “Haverford was a horse’s rear end, but that was to be expected.”

Yousef, the head of Sutton’s household staff, had been leaning against the back of his wife’s chair, but he came alert like the old campaigner he was. “What happened?” They had all agreed only the family would attend the ball, the first social outing from the house of Winshire since Sutton and his children arrived in England. Sutton’s closest friend and advisor had clearly been fretting the entire evening.

Sutton answered before his sister or one of the other ladies could. “Nothing much, Yousef. He left when we arrived, after announcing that the Haverfords and Winshires were at odds.” He took a sip of his drink. “I agree the evening was a success, Georgie.”

“Our girls made an impression,” Grace commented. Her smug smile at Lettie hinted at the hours the two women had spent concocting the scene that began the evening: the four Winderfield cousins at the top of the stairs, each beautifully coiffed and dressed in vibrant colours that contrasted and complimented each other.

“Keeping young Jamie in reserve was a good idea, Patience.” Georgie raised her glass to Yousef’s wife, who made a return salute with her teacup. “It worked just as you suggested,” Georgie continued. “They are intrigued. If I had one person ask me if the heir was as good looking as Drew, I had twenty. And I told the biggest gossips in the ton how glad I was that you were so wealthy!” She grinned at her brother. “When Jamie arrives back from the errand you sent him on, make sure he knows not to be alone with any marriageable female, anywhere, at any time.”

The others continued to dissect the evening, prompted by questions from Yousef and Patience. Haverford’s claim that Sutton was an imposter could be ignored, they all agreed. If recognition by his father and sister was not enough, at least a dozen people at the ball last night had known him as a young man. Sutton did his best to pay attention, but his mind kept drifting back to the encounter with Haverford and the glimpse he’d had of Haverford’s duchess.

The old man, he’d called him when he was twenty-four and a fool. “You can’t marry her to that old man,” he’d screamed at Eleanor’s father when his own suit had been rejected because she was already promised. Haverford was thirteen years his senior, and that seemed old to him then, especially compared to Eleanor’s seventeen. The man would be in his seventies now—an old man in truth, gnarled and bent as an old tree, the once handsome face withered and twisted into a peevish mask.

Eleanor, though… Sutton would have known Eleanor anywhere, as soon as her lovely eyes met his. Through a long and happy marriage to the mother of his children, the bittersweet memory of the young Eleanor had lingered in a corner of Sutton’s heart, and seeing her had brought all those memories flooding back.

She was older, of course, though if he’d not known she was approaching her fifty-second birthday he’d have guessed her no more than forty. Time had delivered on the promise of great beauty and grace.

From what his sister-in-law said of her—they were dear friends, it seemed—time had also honed the strength under the softness that made her submit to her father rather than run away with Sutton. His Eleanor had become the Duchess of Haverford, a grande dame known for her works of charity, her kindness to those who fell afoul of Society’s censure through no fault of their own, and her generosity to her husband’s poor relations and a whole tribe of godchildren.

Such a pity that the feud with Haverford would mean they could not meet. He would have liked to know the woman his Eleanor had become.

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Tea with Cedrica and Sophia

Sophia followed the liveried footman through the ornate splendour of Haverford House paying little attention to the treasures around her. What could Her Grace mean by the cryptic comment in her note of invitation?

I have some one for you to meet and a job that I think you will enjoy.

The thought crossed her mind that her godmother might be match-making, but she dismissed it. Aunt Eleanor would never be so obvious. Still, when she was ushered into the duchess’s private sitting room, she was relieved to see that the room held only Aunt Eleanor and a younger woman – a soberly-dressed girl perhaps a year or two older than Felicity.

Something about the face, particularly the hazel eyes behind the heavy-framed spectacles, identified her as a Haverford connection. Another of the duke’s poor relations, then. Aunt Eleanor had made a calling of finding them, employing them, discovering their yearnings and talents, and settling them in a more fulfilling life.

“Sophia, my dear,” the duchess said, holding out both hands in welcome. Sophia curtseyed and then clasped her godmother’s hands and leaned forward to kiss her cheek.

Her Grace immediately introduced the poor relation. “Sophia, allow me to make known to you my cousin Cedrica Grenford. Cedrica is staying with me for a while, and has been kind enough to help me with my correspondence and note taking.” The undoubtedly very distant cousin was the duchess’s secretary, in other words.

Cedrica served the tea, enquiring timidly about her preferences. She seemed overwhelmed by her surroundings. She addressed Sophia as ‘my lady’ in every other sentence, and had clearly been instructed to call the duchess Aunt Eleanor, for she tripped over every attempt to address her directly and ended up calling her nothing at all.

“Please,” Sophia told her, “call me Sophia as my friends do. Aunt Eleanor’s note suggests we shall be working together on whatever project she has in mind, and we will both be more comfortable if we are on first name terms.”

The duchess leaned forward and touched Cedrica’s hand. “May I tell Sophia some of your circumstances, my dear? It is pertinent to the idea I have.”

Cedrica nodded, and Her Grace explained, “Cedrica is the daughter of a country parson who has had little opportunity to set money aside for his old age. When he fell into infirmity, Cedrica wrote to ask for her cousin’s help, as was right and proper, and I was only too happy to have her here to be my companion, and to arrange for her dear father to be comfortably homed on one of our estates.”

Very much the short version of the story, Sophia suspected. Cedrica was blinking back tears.

The duchess continued, “As it turned out, Cedrica has a positive gift for organisation, and is extremely well read. She is proving to be an absolute genius at my secretarial work; so much so that Aldridge has threated to hire her from under my nose to assist with the work of the duchy.”

Cedrica protested, “He was only joking, Your Gr… Aunt… um. Who has heard of such a thing!”

“That brings me to my point, dear,” Aunt Eleanor said. “Cedrica is entirely self-educated, except for a few lessons at her mother’s knee before that dear lady passed beyond. Why, I ask you? Are women less capable of great learning than men? Cedrica is by no means an exception. You and I, Sophia, know a hundred women of our class, more, who study the arts and the sciences in private.”

Sophia nodded. She quite agreed. Part of Felicity’s restless discontent came from having little acceptable outlet for her considerable intelligence.

“I have done what I can in a small way to help my relatives,” the duchess went on. “Now, I want to do more. Sophia, Cedrica, I have in mind a fund to support schemes for the education of girls. Not just girls of our class, but any who have talents and interests beyond those assigned to them because of their sex and their place in life. Will you help me?”

In the discussion that followed, Cedrica forgot her awe at her exalted relation and that lady’s guest, and gave Sophia the opportunity to see the very gifts Aunt Eleanor spoke of. In a remarkably short time, the young woman had pages of lists — ideas for the types of project that might be sponsored; money raising ideas; names of people of who might support the fund; next steps.

“We are agreed, then,” the secretary said, at last, losing all self-consciousness in her enthusiasm. “The duchess will launch the fund at a Christmas house party and New Year Charity Ball to be held at one of her estates.” She glanced back at her notes. “Our first step will be to hold a meeting at a place to be decided, and invite the ladies whose names I’ve marked with a tick. The purpose of the meeting will be to form a committee to organise the event.”

She sat back with a beaming smile, clutching her papers to her chest.

“An excellent summation,” the duchess agreed. “My dears, we have work to do, but we have made a start; a very good start.”

This is a new scene I’ve written for To Wed a Proper Lady, the novel form of The Bluestocking and the Barbarian, which appeared in Holly and Hopeful Hearts. Holly and Hopeful Hearts was the story of the duchess’s house party. Buy it and the eight great stories it contains at most online retailers.

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First seven sentences in WIP Wednesday

The journey begins with the first step.

I’ve typed THE END in Unkept Promises. I’ve also written the first paragaphs in To Mend the Broken Recluse, so I’m thinking about ends and beginnings. This week, how about putting seven sentences in the comments. You choose what they begin: the book, a chapter, a new scene.

Here’s mine.

The crows rose in a flock over the tower on the borders of Ashbury land, a cacophany on wings. Val straightened and peered in that direction, shading his eyes to see if he could tell what had spooked them. It was unlikely to be a traveller on the lane that branched towards the manor from  the road that passed the tower. After three years of repulsing visitors, the only people he ever saw were his tenant farmers and the few servants he had retained to keep the crumbling monstrosity he lived in marginally fit for human habitation.

He bent back to the plough, but called the team to a halt again when a bird shot up from almost under their hooves. Sure enough, a lapwing nest lay right in the path of the plough. Val carefully steered around it. He knew his concern for the pretty things set his tenants laughing behind his back, but they didn’t take up much room, and they’d soon hatch their chicks and be off to better cover

Okay. That’s eight sentences, but I won’t count if you don’t.

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What Ash Wednesday has in common with creating characters

Outward signs. We burn last year’s palms from Palm Sunday and mix them with consecrated oil mixed with incense, also from last Easter. Inner meaning: we burn all the failed attempts of the year to make a new beginning.

I have been thinking about outward and visible signs of what is inward and invisible. Rituals, actions, habits, practices. They all hint at inner beliefs and motivations. This month, I’m slaving over the backstory, character, and inner motivations of characters for the next four books (one novella and three novels, one of which I need to have completed by the end of May). They’re all crowding my head with scenes that are giving me glimpses of my character’s inner self. But, I have to ask, do they show the character’s true self? Or do they show the mask they display to the world? To write them, I need to know both.

I’m religious, which (to me) means that I love the rituals and practices of my church. I’m also (I hope) a person of faith. I believe, and I try to act accordingly. The books I enjoy, and the books I try to write, are about characters with depth. I want the words I use on the page to hint at dimensions to the character that I don’t spell out in words; not just the rituals and practices, but the beliefs and motivations. And I want them all to be different — not the same hero and the same heroine in book after book with just the physical appearance and the name changed.

My husband has been watching best man speeches on YouTube. (No, I don’t know why, but he has.) The jokes and male-to-male insults of a best man speech are a ritual that indicates the support and affection of the selected friend for the groom. Outward signs with inner meaning.

At Mass today, they had the ashes ceremony for those who missed it last Wednesday, on Ash Wednesday. That day marks the beginning of a period of fasting, abstinence, and prayer in preparation for Easter, more than six weeks away, and the ashes are meant to remind us of the shortness of our lives (‘for you are dust, and to dust you shall return’, says the priest as he marks the forehead of each believer with a cross made from a mix of ashes and oil). They also call to mind the ancient practice of wearing sackcloth and ashes for remorse or mourning. Outward signs with inner meaning.

Oddly enough, one of my characters is a widower who may or may not be called Ash. That’s his name, in the notes about his story that I made close to six years ago; a shortened form of his title. However, in the last month I’ve given him a backstory that includes an unfaithful wife, a manipulative older brother, and a couple of daughters, one (and possible both) of whom is definitely his niece, rather than his own child. This means he hasn’t been Earl of Ashbury for very long, so he might think of himself as Val or Fort. I’m still working on it. Inner motivations. He’s a grumpy devil, and a recluse. He arrived home after his brother’s death three years ago to find that his brother’s widow has sent both girls off to boarding school, washed her hands of them, and departed for parts unknown. He has left them there, figuring they’re better off without him. I’m also still working on his heroine, but I need to know her a lot better before she turns up at his house with a carriage full of children, including his own two, refugees from the cholera epidemic sweeping the school.

I know that he will refuse her admittance and she will demand it, and refuse to move on since two of the girls (including his niece) are showing early signs of the disease. I know she shows her anxiety in contempt for his reluctance, not realising he is already thinking about how to help her. I know that he’ll marshal his pitiful complement of servants to look after the well girls and join her in nursing those who have become ill.  Outward signs with an inner meaning.

I know those things, but I have a lot more work to do before I start to commit the random scenes swirling around my brain onto a page.

I wonder if the whole story could happen around an Ash Wednesday?

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How to use the wheel on a sailing ship

I’ve been bringing my heroine and her entourage from South Africa to England in the latest draft of Unkept Promises, which has meant a lot of research about the type of ship, its size and configuration, what type of accommodation Mia might have found herself in, where she and children might be out of the way but also out in the air during the day, and all sorts of other things that I never mention in the book (but that I need to know so I don’t make any egregious errors).

At one point, she goes off to talk to the ship’s captain, and I set out to find out where the wheel was on a brig-rigged schooner. Which led me to wondering how the wheel worked, which led me to this YouTube clip. You’re welcome.

(The maker of the video notes that he didn’t include the use of the sails, a major factor in steering a sailing ship, as any yachtsman knows.)

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Introspection on WIP Wednesday

 

I try to write characters with side-kicks so they have someone to talk to. My hero of Unkept Promises has no-one for most of the novel, so readers need to see inside his head. ‘Show, don’t tell,’ they say, but don’t you sometimes find that your hero, heroine, or even villain is all alone and you need the reader to know what they’re thinking? Share me an excerpt with some introspection. Here’s a bit of mine, from Unkept Promises.

The house had been sold, the remaining servants had all taken positions elsewhere, so Jules was bunking down in the spare room at a friend’s place. He was sailing soon, and perhaps would never return. The navy wanted him in the Bay of Biscay: him and his ship. When the war was over, he’d retire. He had been at sea, man and boy, for nearly twenty years, and what he’d said to Mia had been echoing ever since. Once the war was over, the Navy would offer little chance for advancement. They’d have more captains than ships, and he had never been willing to use his family connections to edge out men as well qualified as him and perhaps in greater need.

Besides, he had a family. He wanted to build a home with them, see his children grow, wake up to his wife’s welcoming smile.

The cemetery was his last stop before he sailed. He stood before Kirana’s grave, the flowers someone had left long wilted on the mound of still raw earth. The tombstone he and Mia had planned was not yet in place, but he could see it in his mind’s eye. “Here lies Kirana Redepenning, devoted mother and friend. Taken from us far too soon, she will always be in the hearts of Julius, Euronyme, Perdana, Marshanda and Adiratna.”

“I will look after them, Kirana,” he promised. “They will want for nothing.”

 

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Tea with Kitty and Mia

 

Eleanor was delighted to have Lady Catherine Stocke and Mrs Julius Redepenning to tea with her this afternoon. The two had been friends since they met at Haverford Castle half their lifetimes ago, when they were children. Lady Kitty was one of Eleanor’s many goddaughters, and Mia was the daughter of the man who had, in that long ago summer, been cataloguing the Castle’s library.

It was not many years later that Mia married in Haverford Castle — married Captain Julius Redepenning, who was a cousin of Eleanor’s nephew, the Earl of Chirbury.

Eleanor knew that Mia hadn’t seen her husband since the day of the wedding, since he immediately returned to his naval posting in the Far East — and the native mistress who had borne his children.

“What brings the pair of you to London?” she asked, as she handed them their tea and invited them to help themselves to the delicately iced cakes. She had heard, but gossip could distort, as none knew better.

“I am sailing to the Cape Colony where the Captain is currently posted,” Mia replied. “Kitty has come to see me off.”

“How lovely,” Eleanor said. “You and young Jules are to be reunited.”

The amusement in Mia’s eyes suggested she knew that Eleanor was fishing for confirmation of the rumours, and she kindly obliged. “He has been away at sea and might not be aware I am coming,” she explained. “But my friend Kirana is very ill — consumption, I believe. I am going to nurse her, and to bring Jules’s children home with me if the worst happens.”

Eleanor, who had rescued a number of orphaned Haverford by-blows and given them homes, educations, and futures, found nothing to object to in that objective. “So I understood,” she conceded. “I have been telling the harpies I totally approve, and you will apply to me, Mia dear, if you need any help.”

This happens just before Mia leaves for the Cape Colony, and the bulk of Unkept Promises begins.

 

 

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The disease that made you in fashion

One of the biggest killers of humankind in history (apart from other humans) has been a tiny organism we now call Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

In ancient Greece, it was considered the most prevalent disease of the age. Throughout history, it has been feared and the symptoms treated with despair. And in the nineteenth century, it was a fashionable way to die.

The most common form of tuberculosis attacks the lungs. Sufferers experience chest pain, fatigue, night sweats, loss of appetite leading to a general wasting away, and a persistent coughing up of phlegm and later blood (and bits of lung tissue). Eventually the patient’s lungs are so invaded by the disease that they suffocate and die. Sounds sexy, right?

No. Not that bit. What our Regency and Victorian poets and artists admired was those features of the disease that fit their ideas about the causes of illness and their concept of beauty.

First, not knowing about germs, they thought that the causes of the illness varied by social class. When the poor died in their filthy overcrowded rooms, they had the Graveyard Cough, the White Plague, the King’s Evil (so called, because the touch of a king was thought to be a cure for the version of the disease we now call scrofula, a tuberculous swelling of the lymph glands). These were diseases of poverty, immorality, and criminality, which were all clearly linked, since poverty was obviously the fault of the poor. (Come to think of it, some modern commentators haven’t moved on from that belief.)

When the wealthy died, it was clearly a different disease, since they were rich, moral, and altogether less smelly. It was consumption, so called because the person grew thinner and thinner. It was, so medical theory had it, an excess of emotion and genius typical of the artistic mind that slowly consumed the patient. They were killed by fiery passion.

And look how lovely they were while they died! Was it fashionable to be slender (rather than hearty and robust like the working classes)? Not being able to eat made you thin. Was it fashionable to be pale (rather than tanned like those horrid workers who must toil in the sun)? Loss of blood will make you positively pasty.

Since one in four deaths in the nineteenth century was caused by the disease, many fashionable poets, musicians, painters and authors died of consumption, which confirmed, in the minds of the fashionable, that their creativity had killed them. Add to that the predilection of said creative types to glorify death by consumption in their poems, operas, and novels, and hey presto. A horrible slow wasting death becomes desirable.

Kirana, Jules’s mistress, is slowly dying of consumption in my current work-in-progress, Unkept Promises. Her death will be written some time in the next few days, poor soul. 

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Tea with Sophia Belvoir

“So tell me, my dears,” Eleanor said, as she poured tea for the two Belvoir girls, “what do you know of this duel? I understand you were present at the time of the challenge!”

Felicity’s eyes shone with excitement. “Mr Winderfield was given no choice, Aunt Eleanor,” she insisted. “Mr Andrew Winderfield, I mean.”

“You probably know more than we do,” Sophia ventured. “After all, Aldridge was second to Weasel; that is, Mr Wesley Winderfield.”

The duchess shook her head. “Aldridge would not discuss dueling with his own mother, Sophia. Especially since he knows I disapprove of the way His Grace encourages Mr Winderfield — Weasel, I should say, for clarity — to behave towards his cousins. I have heard he shot before the end of the count!”

“The scoundrel,” Felicity said. “He has had to leave town, of course, and Lord Aldridge says he will never be his second again, so he had better not go around any more insulting people’s mothers.”

“And quite right,” Eleanor agreed. “The Winderfield brothers are among your admirers, are they not?” She was looking at her tea cup, so could have been referring to either sister.

Sophia, who was still smarting from her brother’s lecture about not encouraging the possibly base-born sons of the Earl of Sutton to dangle after Felicity, said, “We see them from time to time at Society affairs. But we leave for Bath this week, Aunt Eleanor, so I imagine we will not come across them until next Season, by which time this controversy about their birth should be resolved.”

The duchess, whose spy network in Society must be the envy of governments everywhere, did not comment on what she must know: that ‘from time to time’ meant nearly every event she and Felicity had attended all Season, since she first met Lord Elfingham, the older brother, in a small village in Oxfordshire. He had snatched a child from the path of two runaway carriages and ridden away with her heart. If he was courting either of the sisters, it would be Felicity, of course: the younger, prettier, more vivacious one. Sophia had no intention of discussing any of that.

Perhaps Aunt Eleanor understood, for she changed the subject. “I hope you will be back in London for the meeting of our philanthropic committee in September, my dears. I think you will like what I have in mind.”

***

Sophia will be part of the organising committee for Aunt Eleanor’s house party, which was featured in Holly and Hopeful Hearts. Watch this year for To Win a Lady, the novel-length form of my novella from that collection, starring Lady Sophia Belvoir and James Lord Elfingham.