Book series

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A Toad is Born

The Duke of Wellbridge

The Duke of Wellbridge

Early in 2015, I was at the same FaceBook party as Mari Christie (who writes romance as Mariana Gabrielle). The author whose book launch it was asked us to show pictures of our virtual outfit for the party, and our virtual escort, and Mari and I both decided to bring a roguish rake from one of our books.

And that’s how it began.

There they both were, my Marquis of Aldridge from a book as yet unwritten, and Mari’s Nick Northope, Duke of Wellbridge, from Royal Regard, the lynch pin book in her Sailing Home series. Unregenerate rascals, they soon made two things clear to their authors. One: these rakes were old friends, with many escapades and scandals in their joint history. Two: we had better take our shenanigans out of our friend’s party before we spoiled it for her.

We were working up to the launch of the Bluestockings Belles, so we moved our characters into a month-long FaceBook party at a fictional coaching inn, along with the characters of our Belle friends and other people who wanted to play. Wellbridge, with his bride the lovely Bella, hosted the party. Aldridge spent most of it drunk. Mari and I discovered that we enjoyed impromptu co-writing.

The Marquis of Aldridge

The Marquis of Aldridge, heir to the Duke of Haverford

When the inn party ended, the Belles founded the Bluestockings Belles Bookshop on Facebook, and ever since we’ve been making up stories on line in real time with readers and anyone else who cares to join in.

What happens when two or more creative people co-tell a story comment by comment on a FaceBook thread is raw—often painfully raw. But since those first wild moments, we’ve learned to let the characters have their heads, and worry about editing later.

We’ve written a number of vignettes and even short stories and scenes for longer books this way. Someone posts an introduction and usually an image, and then the other participants bring their characters in, with the action and the thread growing as each person takes the tale another step along its tortuous journey.

That’s just the start. The next step is to capture the thread and decide point of view. The author of the point of view character rewrites the piece, layering in detail, correcting ambiguities and inconsistencies, and resolving lost plot points. Then the partner writers take a look and make their suggestions, and the first draft is done. The story still needs the usual rounds of editing and proofreading, but from this point on, the process is much the same as for any other book.

Over the last eighteen months, Wellbridge has grown into his ducal magnificence in front of the readers of the Bookshop and its predecessor the inn. Still a rogue in many ways, he is a devoted husband and father. For Aldridge, marriage is still in his future. The inn party gave me the story that was the kernel around which I built A Baron for Becky, but Aldridge did not (in that book) end up with the girl. He won’t find himself a wife until at least 2017 in real world time, and 1815 in his own.

Lady Sarah Grenford

Lady Sarah Grenford, daughter of the Duke of Haverford

But when he does, what will happen? A casual comment about what reformed rakes might be like as fathers led us to decide their approach to daughters might be very different to their approach to sons! And thus was born the idea for a vignette. Or perhaps a short story.

What if Aldridge, now the Duke of Haverford, has a daughter he adores? And what if he and his best friend would dearly love to see their children make a match of it? And what if Wellbridge’s son is a rake after the pattern of his father, and the pride of the two older retrobates’ he… Perhaps the word I am looking for is ‘loins’ rather than ‘hearts’.

We decided to write a scenario about the two fathers finding their offspring in a compromising situation, and we did. We wrote the scenario. Then we wrote what came next. Then we wrote a bit of backstory. We gave our hero a title and a nickname, and wrote a scene set in his infancy when he was a baby, and earned both from the king.

David 'Toad' Northope, Marquess of Abersham and heir to the Duke of Wellbridge

David ‘Toad’ Northope, Marquess of Abersham and heir to the Duke of Wellbridge

It wasn’t long before we decided we had a novella, and a novella in the romance genre means a happy ever after ending. So our heroine needed to grow out of being a spoiled brat who always wanted her own way, and our hero needed to find out that being a rake hurts people (including the girl he loves) as well as that only one woman would do for him.

We couldn’t do that in a novella, as it turned out. Never Kiss a Toad, by Jude Knight and Mariana Gabrielle is a novel, more than three quarters written (though much of it is still in FaceBook thread mode), and currently 110,000 words plus. We have just started publishing it on Wattpad, a thousand or so words at a time.

Long before we’ve completed the book on Wattpad, it’ll be available as a novel at our usual retailers, but probably not until next year. So why not join us on Wattpad, find out the fate of Toad and Sal, and have your say as the story grows?

Find Never Kiss a Toad on Jude Knight’s Wattpad

Find Never Kiss a Toad on Mariana Gabrielle’s Wattpad

(We’ll be taking it in turns to post, so follow us both to get a part per week.)

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Scandal and gossip on WIP Wednesday

VFS109732 Ladies Gossiping at the Opera (oil on canvas) by Barnard, Frederick (1846-1896) (attr. to) oil on canvas 39.3x37.4 Private Collection English, out of copyright

Ladies Gossiping at the Opera (oil on canvas) by Barnard, Frederick (1846-1896) 

One useful trope in the historic romance writer’s arsenal is scandal. In the highly structured societies many of us write about, social censure was a powerful sanction. It could ruin lives—not just the lives of the women gossiped about, and occasionally even the men, but also those of their families.

Have you used scandal, or the threat of scandal, as a plot point? Share a bit with us, if you would, in the comments.

Here’s mine, from A Raging Madness.

When Alex finished, Lord Henry turned to Ella. “You have shown exemplary courage, Lady Melville. Thank you for what you did for Alex. This family owes you more that we can ever repay. What are your plans? You may call on our help for anything you need. ”

Ella blushed. “Alex helped me first, my lord. He saved my life, I believe, and certainly my sanity. But I would be deeply grateful for help. I must work for my living, and I thought perhaps Susan might advise me on how to find an employer? I thought I could nurse, perhaps, or be a companion to someone elderly, as I have been these five years.”

“Oh, but…” Susan began, then fell quiet, her eyes sliding to Alex.

Lord Henry frowned. “There may be a more immediate problem, Ella. May I call you ‘Ella’, as my children do? You saved my son’s life and so I quite feel you are part of the family, my dear.”

Ella nodded her agreement, lost for words. The man was the son of an earl, and a brigadier general, and he wanted to include her in his family?

“I have met your brother-in-law, I am sorry to say. He is here in London, and he called on me to demand that I tell him the whereabouts of my son.”

“Edwin is here?” Ella said at the same time as Alex said, his mouth curving in a predatory grin, “I would be delighted to meet with Braxton, the hell-spawned bastard.”

At Lord Henry’s raised eyebrow, he muttered an apology, which Susan ignored, saying, “Braxton? You are Braxton’s mad sister!” She patted Ella’s hand again. “Not that you are, of course, I do not mean that. I mean Braxton and his wife have been spouting that story all over town. That their sister is not in her right mind, and that she has been abducted by a…” She trailed off. “Oh dear.”

“Yes,” Lord Henry murmured. “That is the problem.”

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Sidekicks, Henchmen, and BFF on WIP Wednesday

jiltedI’m writing romances, so my stories need two main characters. And most of them have an antagonist or two to throw barriers in the way of my protagonists’ happy ending. But few indeed are the stories—mine or other people’s—without other people important to the plot because of their supporting role. Today’s work-in-progress Wednesday is dedicated to those others: to the confidants, the best friends, the offsiders, the sisters, even the rivals.

Usual rules. I show you mine, and you show me yours in the comments. This is Jonno Price, the teenage valet of my injured Major Alexander Redepenning (retired). The piece is from the first chapter of A Raging Madness.

Out in front of the house, Alex’s chaise waited, with his man Jonno—stripling boy, rather, barely out of his seventeenth year—leaning against a tree at the head of the horses. Alex was nearly up to him before he jerked fully upright.

“Major!” Jonno’s brain woke a second after his tongue, and he corrected himself. “Mr Redepenning, sir. Are we off, then?”

Alex ignored the slip and the stab of regret it caused. “Back to the inn, Jonno. I’d like to make an early start of it. There’s heavy weather coming, they were telling me, and if we have to hole up until it is over, I’d rather do it in a decent sized town than in an inn at the rear end of nowhere.”

“Right you are, sir. Close lot they have here, sir.” Jonno kept up a comfortable patter as he put down the modified step that allowed Alex to drag his bad leg up into the chaise with the minimum of help from his man. Jonno’s conversational overtures had been rebuffed, no refreshments had been offered to man or beast, and Jonno had been directed to water for the horses only reluctantly, after a direct request.

Alex let the boy’s words wash over him as he settled into his seat stifling a groan. Eight hours on the road followed by all this standing around had inflamed the constant ache he lived with into active knives of pain. Jonno, having folded away the step, led the horses around to face the carriage way, then leapt up beside Alex, released the brake, and chirruped the pair into movement. His unconscious ease of movement made Alex’s command sharper than Jonno deserved.

“Give me the reins. I’m not dead yet.”

Jonno handed them over, wisely saying nothing, though his face spoke for him.

“I don’t drive with my legs, Jonno,” Alex said, trying to sound more conciliatory. With Jonno on the brake, and a tired pair of not particularly fine post horses, he was putting less strain on the damned limbs than he would sitting tense beside Jonno fretting about his incapacity. He had a flash of memory: a carriage race in Syria, every bone and muscle in his body called into glorious service as he and his colonel’s four blood horses swept to victory against the competitors from three other brigades, his own screaming support from every hillock along the track.

Never again. Those days were behind him.

Jonno whistled. “What a beauty!”

The colt paced them in the half light of dusk, whickering at the stranger horses on the other side of the stone wall that closed him in, then tired at the lack of response and kicked up his heels, racing off into the gloom.

Jonno and Alex shared a smile. “A fine yearling,” Alex observed, “and bidding fair to be a racer, I would say. Are we still on Melville lands? He has the look of Captain Melville’s old horse.”

“It’s a Melville field, right enough,” Jonno agreed. “That old oak we’re passing? Marks the boundary, they told me in the village. We’ll be back at the inn in a few minutes, sir.”

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Animals on WIP Wednesday

woman-at-the-piano-with-cockatoo-by-gustave-lc3a9onard-de-jonghe-1870My friend and fellow Bluestocking Belle Caroline Warfield is fond of owls, and is thinking of putting one in her next book. She comments that she has had sheep, goats, a dog, a cat, horses, and a number of chickens, but not an owl.

My books have been relatively deficient in animals. One heroine’s daughter had a pet rooster, I wrote a short story about a pet cat, and horses are common. I had wolves in another short story, but they didn’t stay wolves for long, and were not pets. And, of course, The Raven’s Lady has a raven in it.

But animals feature in two current works-in-progress.

  • In my novella for the Belles’ holiday box set, I have a kitten. The housekeeper’s cat has produced a litter, and several of them will pop on in various stories in the set.
  • And two horses feature in the novel I’m writing at the moment: the heroine’s colt, which she has to leave behind when she escapes her bullying relatives, and the canal boat horse, Daisy.

Do any of your stories have animals? Share them here, in the comments. Here’s my kitten from The Bluestocking and the Barbarian.

When he left his chamber, three gold tassels depended from the front of each boot, and proved a tempting target. A kitten darted out from under an occasional table when James stopped to close the door behind him, and took a flying leap at the tassels, as James discovered when he felt the sudden weight.

He took a careful step, expecting the small passenger to drop away, but it buried its claws and its teeth into its golden prey and glared up at him.

“Foolish creature,” he told it going down onto the knee of the other leg so that he could reach it and remove it, carefully lifting each paw to detach the tangled claws. “These gaudy baubles are to attract my lady, not a fierce little furry warrior.” He lifted the kitten in one hand, and held it up to continue his lecture face to face. “Now where do you belong, hmmm? Have you wandered off from your Mama? Do you belong to this house, I wonder, or did you come with a guest?”

The kitten squeaked a tiny meow.

“No, little one. I will not put you down to chew my tassels, and to trip one of the great ladies or be trodden on by one of the gentlemen. You are a pretty little fellow, are you not?” He tucked the cat against his chest and rubbed behind its ears, prompting a loud rusty purr incongruously large for the small frame of the kitten.

Focused on the kitten, he was still aware of footsteps approaching and looked up to see Hythe, who looked uncomfortable in a tight fitting jerkin over short ballooning breeches that allowed several inches of clocked stocking to show between the hem of the breeches and the thigh-length fitted boots. The short robe, flat cap, and heavy flat chain gave a further clue, and Hythe had tried for authenticity by stuffing padding under the jerkin—a pillow, perhaps?

“Henry the Eighth?” James ventured, half expecting Hythe to walk past without speaking, or make another intemperate verbal attack.

Instead, the younger man nodded. “My sister Felicity picked it. Er… I wanted to speak with you… I owe you an apology, Winder… Er… Elfingham. My sister Felicity told me that… Well, the fact is I made an accusation without checking my facts.” Hythe nodded again, clearly feeling that he had said what he needed to say.

“Very handsome of you, Hythe,” James said.

Hythe ran a finger around inside his collar, flushing slightly. “Yes, well. The thing is… You will tell Sophia that I apologized, will you not?”

Ah. Clearly Sophia had expressed her discontent.

“Sisters can be a trial, can they not,” James said, and Hythe warmed to the sympathy.

“Just because she is older, she thinks she can…” He visibly remembered his audience. “Sophia is of age, and will make her own decisions. But I think it only fair to tell you that I have advised her to wait until after the hearing at the Privileges Committee before she makes any decision.”

James inclined his head. He could understand Hythe’s position. He hoped he could persuade Sophia to ignore the advice. Time to change the subject. He held up the little kitten.

“Do you happen to know where this little chap belongs?”

Hythe flushed still deeper. “So that’s where he got to. He… ah… appears to be mine. In a way. The housekeeper’s cat had kittens and this one seems to have adopted me. Little nuisance.”

But Hythe’s hands were gentle as he took the kitten from James, and he tucked it under his chin, his other hand coming up to fondle the furry head.

“I’ll just put him back in my room so he doesn’t get in anyone’s way.”

Hythe retreated back down the hall. James could not hear individual words, but from the sound of his voice, he was giving the kitten a loving scold. And James had managed to have what almost amounted to a conversation with his intended brother-in-law. He would count that as a win.

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Antagonists on WIP Wednesday

maxresdefaultI do enjoy writing a good villain. Not all of my books have one. Sometimes, the only obstacles to the hero and heroine come from within, or from their life circumstances. Overcoming those can be hard and the journey can be satisfying, but for a true hiss-boo moment, with rotten tomatoes flying from the audience and ladies fainting in the gallery, we need a moustache-twirling, hand-rubbing, snickering,  wicked villain.

So what does your WIP hold? Is your antagonistic force a person, and is that person a villain? Share an excerpt that shows him or her in all their dreadful glory! (And if you don’t have a villain, share your antagonist anyway.)

Here are two of my villains, from A Raging Madness. Ella is escaping from the window of her bed chamber, and stops at the bottom of the climb for a rest.

Inside, a very long way away on the other side of the gentle fog that embraced her, two people were talking. Constance and Edwin. It did not matter. They were silly people, anyway. Gervais had not admired his older half-brother; a matter in which he and Ella were in rare accord. The two men shared a mother, but little of that kind, gentle woman showed in either son: the one a bullying, often violent rake; the other a sanctimonious Puritan—but another bully for all that. Not as much so as his wife.

The bully was bullied. Ella suppressed her giggle. Sssshhh. Mustn’t make a sound. She was running away. Soon. First she would have a little sleep.

But as she closed her eyes, her own name caught her attention. Constance and Edwin were talking about her? She forced herself to concentrate, to listen.

“No, Mrs Braxton. Ella will not convince them she is sane. I have chosen with care, I tell you. I visited six asylums before this one, and this is perfect for our purposes. The doctor in charge has promised to keep her dosed, and even if he does not, the place itself will drive her insane. If you saw it, heard the noise… Yes, my dear, I can assure you, our plans are sound.”

Constance answered, the whine in her voice grating against Ella’s eardrums. “But what if you are wrong, Edwin? If she convinces someone in authority that she is sane, prison will be the least…”

“No, my dove. Not at all. No one at the asylum will listen to her ravings, and if they did, what of it? Who will they tell? Even in the worse case, all we need do is say her mind was turned after mother’s death, and how glad we are that she is well again.”

“I do not know.” The frown was heavy in Constance’s voice. “But we cannot keep her here. I trust Kingsford, but the other servants may start to murmur. It will drive her insane, you say?”

“It will. I guarantee it. I hesitate to mention it, Mrs Braxton, it not being a topic for a lady’s delicate ears…”

“Spit it out, Edwin. What?”

“My own treasure, I am given to understand that the attendants avail themselves of the, er, charms of the patients, and even do a, er, trade with the nearby town. Not, of course, with the approval of the medical staff. No, of course. That would be most unprofessional. But it is most enterprising of them, and serves our purposes rather well, dear sister being a comely woman.”

Ella puzzled this out. Surely Edwin did not mean that the attendants forced the women, and prostituted them?

“Ah. Very good,” Constance said. “The woman is horribly resilient. Any decent gentlewoman would have succumbed to madness long since with all your brother put her through, and what has happened since. But surely even she is not coarse enough to withstand multiple rapes.”

“The doctor will be here tomorrow,” Edwin said, with enormous satisfaction. “And she will be safely tucked away where she can do no harm.”

Their voices faded as they moved away, clearly leaving the room since the window went dark.

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Sunday retrospective

timetravelIn the last half of November in 2014, I was sent Farewell to Kindness off to beta readers and began writing Candle’s Christmas Chair.

The Epilogue to Farewell to Kindness threw me a curve ball that took me more than nine months to find in the bushes. I lost the heroine of what was then still called Encouraging Prudence. (And figuring out what my characters were trying to tell me has turned that book into two: Prudence in Love, and Prudence in Peril.) In ‘When you break eggs make omelettes’, I posted about the conundrum of stories that escape their author, with a long quote from Juliet Marillier.

I posted about happy endings, agreeing with those who criticise them as unrealistic, and pointing out:

The critics are, of course, quite right. Happy endings do not happen in reality. And neither do sad endings. In fact, endings of any kind are a totally artificial construct. My personal story didn’t begin with my conception; my conception was simply an event in the story of my parents, and my story is an integral part of that. Nor will it end at my death. What I’ve made (children, garden, quilts, books) will carry on after me.

Whenever we write and whatever we write, we impose an artificial structure on reality. We choose a point and call that the beginning. And we choose another point and call that the end.

My post about psalm singers might be worth a look. They played an important role in the communities of the 18th and early 19th century, and in my novel Farewell to Kindness. I give a bit of history and a couple of YouTube clips of songs as they might have sung them (one psalm and one considerably more secular).

‘How to tell what novel you are in’ was a link and quotes from a series of Toast posts, including How to tell whether you’re in a Regency novel, and How to tell whether you are in novels by a number of other authors. A sample?

7. A gentleman of your acquaintance once addressed you by your Christian name as he brushed his fingers against the lace filigree of your fichu. You still blush at the recollection.

And in my last post for November, I talked about the cycle of the liturgical year, and how earlier times fitted this cycle to the rhythms of the season and the demands of agriculture. Before most people were driven from the land and commerce began to rule over piety, church holy days meant holidays. And even into the late Georgian, the week long feast of Whitsuntide remained.

In Farewell to Kindness, the action of a third of the novel happens before the backdrop ofWhitsunweek (also known as Whitsuntide).

Carl Spitzweg - Das PicknickApart from walks, fairs, picnics, horse races and other activities, the week was known for the brewing of the Whitsunale. This was a church fundraising activity–the church wardens would take subscriptions, create a brew, and sell or distribute it during the week of Whitsuntide. It has a certain appeal. It would certainly be a change from cake stalls and sausage sizzles!

Whitsunweek was the week following the Feast of Pentecost (WhitSunday), and seems to have been the only week-long medieval holiday to survive into early modern times. It usually fell after sheep shearing and before harvest, and it was a week of village festivities and celebrations.

 

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What went wrong in WIP Wednesday

What could possibly go wrong?

What could possibly go wrong?

And I didn’t choose the title of this post to acknowledge that it isn’t even Wednesday. Today, I’m using a writing tip as my starting point for the day’s theme.

When writing, don’t ask yourself what happens; ask yourself what goes wrong.

If nothing goes wrong, there isn’t a plot, and every plot is a series of obstacles, external or internal, between the protagonists and their goals.

So please share a few lines in your WIP where things seem to be going as they should but suddenly turn pear-shaped.

My excerpt is from the second book in The Golden Redepennings series, A Raging Madness. Alex and Eleanor have stopped in a village so that Alex (who has large chunks of shrapnel floating around in his thigh) can rest and Eleanor can go through the worst of the withdrawal from the opiates her horrible relatives have been forcing down her throat. But Alex has just met someone that Ella knows; someone who believes her brother-in-law’s claims that she is insane. Note that Alex, a product of his time, tries to avoid a direct lie.

Ella sat at the table under the window, where she could peer around the curtain at the garden without being seen. No rector yet. Down below, Alex had moved her chair so he could watch the path from the house. He was eating her toast, and drinking tea from the cup Jonno had poured her. After a moment’s hesitation, she lifted the window, just slightly. There. If they talked in the garden, she would hear the whole conversation.

She flinched at the sound of the door knocker, and fought the urge to run across to the other side of the house to see who was calling.

“See who that is, Jonno, would you, since our landlady is out?” Alex said calmly, and he had buttered and jammed another slice of toast before Jonno ushered two men out into the garden. Yes. The rector, and the other must be his friend, the local vicar.

From this angle, she could see Alex’s face, but not the rector’s. She could hear their voices, though.

“So! You are this Mr Reid. What are you playing at, Redepenning, and what have you done with poor Lady Melville?”

At the last question, Alex, whose eyes had been twinkling, sobered. “Lady Melville? She is still missing then? Surely you do not think I…?” He stood suddenly, looking so affronted that the rector took a step back. “Rector, I must protest. What sort of a gentleman would take advantage of a woman of frail mental capacity? I am not such a villain!”

He subsided back into his chair, waving the piece of toast he still held at the other seating around the table. “You will excuse me; the walk tired my leg. Please. Take a seat, gentlemen. Can my servant fetch you tea? I regret that our landlady is from home, but I would happily convey a message.”

The vicar sat, while the rector remained standing. “Mr Reid, or is it Major Redepenning…?”

“Mr Redepenning, in fact. I have sold out, sir, because of my injury. But I beg you to keep my true name a secret. A lady’s reputation, you know, though I am embarrassed to discuss such a matter with a man of God.”

The rector sat then, and rushed into speech, leaning towards Alex in his urgency. “Yes. Well that is the point, is it not? This so called lady; this Mrs Reid. If she is not Lady Melville, who is she? Eh? Who is she? That is the point.”

Alex, amusement lighting his face, said, “Jonno, is Mrs Reid still off on her walk?” He dropped his voice, confidingly. “You would be reassured if you could meet the lady, gentlemen, though I do not suppose she would be pleased with that solution. Alas, I fear I have been a disappointment to her. Hence the walk! And last time she lost her temper, I did not see her for months. Still, you are welcome to wait. I am sure she will return.”

He dropped his voice, and Ella had to strain to hear him. “She is not happy about her condition,” he confided. “Well. And one cannot blame her, of course.”

“Her condition?” The rector seized on the words. “She is ill?”

“Oh yes,” Alex confirmed. “That is why we stopped in this village. The motion of the carriage… One hopes the child is her husband’s, distressing though the thought is. It would be most unfortunate were it born with fair hair like mine. Or the Redepenning blue eyes. That would be hard for a husband to overlook, do you not think?”

“Sir!” The vicar rose to his feet, almost spitting with shock and horror. “I take leave to tell you, sir, that you are a despicable cad.”

(And yes. I’ve been missing my usual WIP Wednesday posts because things went wrong. But hey. Life.)

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What’s in a name?

6269185_f520

Book titles matter. A rose by any other name, Juliet claimed, would smell as sweet, but would people be as willing to put their noses close if it were called Skunkstink, or Fartflower? And titles bother me.

Sometimes, a title will occur immediately, surfacing from the interior of my brain without any effort on my part. Gingerbread Bride was like that. As soon as we came up with the concept of runaway brides for the Bluestocking Belles 2015 holiday box set, the title and the basic story appeared in my mind.

Sometimes, I’ll come up with a concept for a series, then have to find titles that will fit. All the titles for novels in The Golden Redepennings series are excerpts from quotes. Farewell to Kindness comes from The Count of Monte Cristo.

“And now…farewell to kindness, humanity and gratitude. I have substituted myself for Providence in rewarding the good; may the God of vengeance now yield me His place to punish the wicked.”

The one I’m working on now is called A Raging Madness, which comes from a quote by French philosopher Francois de La Rochefoucauld.

“…envy is a raging madness that cannot bear the wealth or fortune of others.”

Do these fulfill the criteria that Tucker Max lists in How to Title a Book The Right Way?
  1. Attention Grabbing
  2. Memorable
  3. Informative (gives idea of what book is about)
  4. Easy to say
  5. Not embarrassing or problematic for someone to say aloud to their friends

You tell me.

I’ve been fretting over two other titles, both books I’ve just finished.

The novel I have just received back from beta readers has been Seeking Prudence, Encouraging Prudence, and most recently Embracing Prudence. And it is part of a series loosely known as The Virtue Sisters. The other books would include a sequel to the current one, and also a book for each of Prudence Virtue’s sisters, Hope, Faith, and Charity. And all my titles are pretty blah.

After talking to friends and thinking—a lot—I’m leaning to the series titleThe Wages of Virtue.

The individual books would be Firstname in Something.

So either Prudence in Love followed by Prudence in Peril or Prudence in Desire followed by Prudence in Danger.

If we go with the ‘d’ words, we’d have Hope in Despair, Faith in Decline, and Charity in Doubt.

Otherwise, I’m sticking with Hope in Despair, but I might go for Faith in Jeopardy and Charity in Tribulation.

The novella is an entirely different matter! Tentatively entitled The Bluestocking and the Barbarian, which at least means what you see is what you get, it is again the first of a series. What to do, what to do?

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Babies and children on WIP Wednesday

29e344e7e89a24d7c75d422b5a5b5aedPerhaps because I’m a mother and a grandmother, I tend to have children in my novels. Such were the times, that an author can easily write a story without ever including scenes with children, leaving them safely out of sight and out of mind in the nursery or schoolroom — but I like them.

So, with apologies to those who can’t play, this week’s work-in-progress Wednesday is looking for the little people. Post me an extract with the child or baby in your work-in-progress (or published novel, if your current WIP doesn’t have any).

Here’s mine, having breakfast after an eventful night.

Aldridge watched Antonia eat.

Gren was sitting beside her eating bacon, eggs, and toast as if he had been starved for months, and it was to him that Antonia addressed the question.

“Uncle Gren, why does He keep looking at me?” The initial capital was audible. “Is he my uncle too, like you and Uncle David?” Gren stopped, a fork halfway to his mouth. He put it down while he considered the question, looking from Prue to Aldridge.

It was Aldridge who answered. “Yes, Antonia. I am your uncle.”

She slipped from her chair and gave him a polite curtsey. “I am pleased to make your ’quaintance, Uncle. How do you do?”

He bowed, gravely. “I am well, thank you, Miss Virtue. How do you do?”

Antonia considered this. “I am sad to be leaving my chickens and my pondering tree, but I think the journey will be a very great a’venture. We are travelling a long way and will have a new home where people do not call names, Auntie Charity says. And it is closer for Mama to visit, Mama says.”

“Sit and eat your breakfast, child,” Charity told her. “Lord Aldridge says we must leave soon.”

Aldridge accepted a loaded plate from Cook and took it to sit on the other side of Antonia. Soon, they were engaged in low-voiced conversation. The Aldridge charm, Prue noted, worked as well on six-year-olds as it did on grown-up females.

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Brothers or sisters on WIP Wednesday

d78ec673dec2a74d62d4bed3f8dd7badAll of a character’s intimate interactions can help to display or develop character, and in some ways no one knows you better or can more easily push your buttons than your brothers and sisters (or cousins or other close relations that you grew up with.

In this week’s WIP Wednesday, I’m looking for an excerpt that shows your related characters in a scene where we learn something about them because of what they think or how they behave.

They had talked it over at length while still staying with Charlotte, and in the carriage on the way from Essex. At inordinate length.

Charity could not, would not stay in Selby’s cottage. She would go somewhere she was not known, and introduce herself as a widow, using another name. Mrs Smith, she said, for who was to find one Mrs Smith among thousands?

But how she and the children were to live was a problem. Prue would help, of course. She could double the allowance she was paying for Antonia’s care, would triple it if Charity would allow. Tolliver’s work paid well enough, and she had a little set aside.

Charity wanted to borrow Prue’s nest egg. She had some idea of setting up a milliner’s shop. Not in London, but somewhere that was cheaper to live and safer for the children. “Even you said I make beautiful hats, Prue,” she argued.

True enough, but running a business required more than an eye for fashion and an artistic touch with a needle. Prue didn’t want to see her savings disappear and leave Charity and the girls in a worse case than before.

“We need somewhere for you and the children while we think about how best to make your plan work,” she told Charity. “I know a lady who supports women in trouble such as yours. She may have a place.” Or she may never wish to speak to Prue again, in which case they would have to think of something else.

One thing Charity was determined on; Prue was not to ask Selby to support his daughters until they were somewhere he could not find them. “It is not as if he is going to give us any money, anyway, Prue. He barely gave us a thing when I thought I was his wife. Just a few pounds now and again when he visited. He paid the servants directly and is several quarters in arrears, Prue. Oh dear. Should I not pay them before I let them go?” Another problem for her to worry at until Prue was ready to leap screaming from the carriage with her hands over her ears.