Made-to-order stories

A war bride’s transport on WIP Wednesday
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A war bride’s transport on WIP Wednesday

I’ve been writing a story for my October newsletter. My heroine is a woman with two children, trying to get home to England and the husband who left her in Spain when the army invaded France.

The ship docked in Portsmouth on the morning tide. The passage from Spain had taken most of the money Maggie had been able to save, and she was determined to be out of town before nightfall so that she would not have spend any more.

In summer, a woman, a toddling infant and a baby could make themselves comfortable for the night in a hedge or under a tree—and had done so many times during their long treks through Portugal, Spain and even the south of France. But towns were not safe places for those without a roof over their head and a stout door between them and the predators who would take even the little that Maggie and her children owned.

It didn’t take her long to discover that passage on a coach would cost more than she could afford, so it would be another long walk.

Two hundred miles, at least, and that was if the first village was the correct one. It was only after several letters had gone unanswered that a kindly army chaplain explained that Parker was a common surname and that many villages were called Ashton. Even in the English Midlands, which was all she knew about where Will’s family lived, there were several Ashtons. She had sent her next letter to them all, proclaiming her intention to leave Spain and come to England. She hoped one of those letters had reached the intended recipient, for the cost had set back her savings and kept her in Spain for another month, even though the chaplain was good enough to send the package in the army mail, to be posted on from London.

Ah! That was what she needed. Outside a general store was a sturdy wooden wheelbarrow. Maggie went inside to find the price. “Three shillings, ma’am,” said the shopkeeper. After some haggling, she bought it for two shillings, popped Billy inside, and pushed it back to the wharf.

To her relief, the boy she had paid to watch her baggage was still there, and so were her bags, her small trunk and the bag with all the things she needed for the baby. She gave the boy another threepence and an extra penny to help her load the wheelbarrow. Then, with Billy perched on the trunk and Madeleine still in the shawl tied tightly to her back, she set off to walk to Ashton.

“It will take us the rest of June and part of July, I expect,” she told her two children as she walked. Chatting to the children helped to pass the time as the long miles rolled away under the single wheel and her shoulders ached. Her feet, too, for it had been months since their last long trek.

Once she had arrived in San Sebastián, she had found work cleaning floors and making up rooms in an inn, so she could save enough money to buy passage for them all. Between that and the time on the ship, it had been more than three months since she walked that far, and Madeleine had grown heavier—it felt like much heavier.

Eva was happy in her shawl. Soothed by her closeness to Maggie and rocked by the movement, she made no complaint. Maggie supposed she slept some of the time, and for the rest, watched the world pass with those wise eight-month baby eyes.

Billy, who was never still even in his sleep, kept asking to get down from the wheelbarrow to walk and then to get up again a few minutes later, for he was tired of walking.

 

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Mystery on WIP Wednesday

I do like a mystery with my romance. What about you? This is from a made-to-order story tentatively called The Missing Daughter. I’m looking at you, Laura!

Louisa still had no idea what was going on three days later when the three of them reached Mama’s home village. Papa arranged a suite of rooms at the inn for his family, and baths to refresh after the journey. Mama ordered dinner to be served in the suite’s sitting room in one hour.

“I have a note to write before my bath,” she announced.

“To the vicarage?” Papa asked. “Or the house?”

“Vicarage,” Mama said. “I will make an appointment in the morning.”

“What is going on, Mama?” Louisa asked. “Why are we here?”

“Go and see if your bath is ready, dear,” Mama said. “I will come through shortly to undo your buttons and laces.”

Mama would say nothing more. Not then, not over dinner, and not when she came to check that Louisa was safely tucked up in bed, with the door to the outside passage locked and bolted.

Louisa tried again over breakfast. “Are we going to visit your family, Mama?” she asked.

“I don’t have family here anymore, Louisa, and no, I am not telling you anything else just yet. All in good time.”

That again. Louisa cast a pleading glance at her father. His response was unexpected. “I might still have a brother here.”

“A brother? I have an uncle?” Papa had never mentioned his family. And Papa came from the same village as Mama? How had Louisa not known that?

“I assume you still have an uncle,” Papa said. “He might still live here. We lost touch.”

Louisa’s mind whirled, teaming with so many questions that she couldn’t find anything to say.

Mama frowned at Papa, then said to Louisa, “I am going to visit the vicar. Stay in your room while I am gone, Louisa.”

“No need for that,” Papa told her. “I am going to walk your mother to the vicarage, Louisa, and then go and visit my brother, or at least my old home. You can come with me, if you wish.”

“Will!” Mama objected.

Papa raised his eyebrows. “I will take my daughter to meet her uncle, Lissie,” he declared. And that was the end of it. People thought that Papa lived under the cat’s paw; that Mama was head of the family. Louisa knew that Papa seldom countered Mama’s commands and decisions, but when he did, Mama subsided.

“She will be safe now,” he said, reassuringly.

Had Louisa not been safe before? The more she heard, the less she felt she knew!

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Propriety on WIP Wednesday

In a made-to-order story I’m currently writing for the winner of the Bluestocking Belles’ May rafflecopter, my hero has been called to a neighbour’s house. He is good with animals, and she is worried about her toy spaniel.

Thirty minutes later, he handed the reins to one of the Dalrymple grooms, and presented his card at the front door.

“You are to be shown straight up, my lord,” the butler told him.

Lady Dalrymple was sitting on a sofa in the drawing room, little Lady Fluff-fluff on a cushion beside her. Lord Puff-puff, the lady’s other pet, had been lying at Miss Watkin’s feet, but leapt up when Bas entered and hurried towards him, the plume of his tail waving an enthusiastic greeting.

Bas bowed to Lady Dalrymple, patted Puff, and gave Miss Watkin a friendly nod.

“Lord Sebastian, at last you are here.” Lady Dalrymple sighed, dramatically, laying one white ring-bedecked hand on her decollotage. She had once, or so rumour said, been a great beauty—an actress who had achieved the impossible, and married a baron.

He had long since gone to his rest, and she had taken on the role of aristocratic widow with great enthusiasm. Perhaps the actress still showed through at times like this. One could even see remnants of her youthful appeal through the powder and rouge with which she tried to disguise her wrinkles.

She batted her lashes at him and pouted. “I thought you would never arrive.”

He had come immediately, but he would not point that out. “How is my patient?” he asked, instead.

Recalled to the purpose of his visit, Lady Dalrymple turned to the little dog, who at that moment sat up and then jumped down from the cushion, evading Lady Dalrymple’s grasping hands. Fluff-fluff stepped towards him, not in her usual scamper but in a deliberate trudge. Perhaps she really was ill?

“She is restless,” Lady Dalrymple explained, “and she has not finished her meals this past two days. Also, there is a… When I put her on my lap… My dress… I had to move her away, because of the—” she paused, then, in a hissed whisper, “mess!”

As Bas crouched to greet the little lady, a suspicion crossed his mind, and a quick palpation of the swollen abdomen concealed under the fur confirmed his diagnosis. Lady Fluff-fluff was not ill. She was whelping.

He picked the little dog up and examined her more closely, checking her bright eyes, her cold damp nose, the cheery set of her ears and wave of her tail, the indecorous secretions staining her rear end. Yes, the spaniel was going to give birth, and shortly. Certainly within the next day.

Lady Dalrymple looked up at him, anxiously. “Is she very ill, Lord Sebastian? Will she—she will get well, will she not? You can fix her?”

Bas gently put Lady Fluff-fluff down. “She is perfectly well, Lady Dalrymple. She is about to have a litter of puppies, that is all.”

Lady Dalrymple shot to her feet. “That cannot be! She could not… That is to say, her husband, Lord Puff-puff, cannot…”

Ah yes. It had been before he moved to the area, but the village still giggled about how distressed Lady Dalrymple had been by Fluff-fluff’s first season. Declaring that she would not allow her pet to be so humiliated ever again, Lady Dalrymple had commanded one of her shepherds to render poor Lord Puff-puff incapable of another of the performances that so overset his mistress.

It made a man wince, and also wonder about the baron’s bedroom prowess.

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Art imitates life

 

Some of you may have noticed that many of my stories feature characters with disabilities. This is a topic close to my heart. I have lived most of my life with chronic illness, and have a brother who is blind, several relatives either permanent or temporary wheelchair users, a son with brain damage and various family members challenged by mental illness of one kind or another.

The idea for the hero in my latest newsletter subscriber story came out of my day job. I’m a consultant for a firm of plain English writers and trainers, and we did a field trip to the laboratory of a new client — a medical research organisation. Their mission is to solve unsolvable medical problems. The first of these, so the founder told us, was non-invasive treatment of strawberry birthmarks. These are disfiguring vascular tumours that mostly go away of their own accord,  but can sometimes grow in places that cause damage and can even threaten the child’s life. The treatment used to be unpleasant, invasive, and costly. And now, thanks to this research group, it is non-invasive and cheap.

Which set me wondering how a Regency family whose child had a strawberry birthmark might have coped. Eric, or Wreck as his family called him, was the result. In my story, he was the third son of an aristocratic family, sent as a baby to a remote estate, and raised by a loving Nanny, with occasional visits from his mother who was horrified by him.

Then the second son died, and Wreck needed to be retrieved in case he might one day succeed to the title. The mother sent him to Italy for surgical treatment. My story begins when he comes home. Subscribe to my newsletter if you want to know what happens next. I’m sending the newsletter out this week.

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Hidden attraction on WIP Wednesday

Most of my stories have a romance in them. Even those that don’t are likely to have some sexual tension. I make no apology for that. For one thing, the kind of love I celebrate in my books is as real as it gets. It’s not for nothing that the Bible uses the language of romantic and physical love to describe the way God loves creation. When two people fall in love and become intimate, they expose deeper layers of themselves more quickly than in any other situation that doesn’t involve near and present risk of death.

And then they have deal with what the most frightening or embarrassing things they’ve exposed, by accepting, by changing or by drawing back. I find it fascinating.

Of course, other relationships can be intense and intimate too. The love between a parent and child, between siblings or long associates, between friends who are kindred spirits: these are all worth exploring. But add the element of physical intimacy, and you both complicate things and provide a mechanism (all those hormones) for becoming close really quickly.

Today, on WIP Wednesday, I want to see excerpts from your work-in-progress where one of your protagonists does something, says something, or thinks something to show that they are physically attracted to the other but doesn’t feel they can act on it. Please keep it clean. This blog doesn’t have an adults-only filter.

My excerpt is from The Lost Treasure of Lorne, which will appear in Lost in the Tale. (Due for release 6 September)

His Grace the Duke of Kendal was digging in the moat again. The unusually dry summer had presented an opportunity he could not resist. With the moat almost empty, even the deepest pools came barely to the hem of his kilt, which, apart from the boots that were out of sight under the murky water, was all he wore.

At not quite forty years of age, the duke was still a fine figure of a man, broad of shoulder, slim of waist, and well-muscled. Even Caitlin Morgan, that stern moralist his housekeeper, paused at the windows of the long gallery to admire the view before she scolded the maids who were doing the same and sent them scurrying back to their tasks. Caitlin stopped for one more glance before resolutely turning away and closing herself in the housekeeper’s pantry with her accounts.

The columns of figures were unlikely to drive the sight of a half-naked duke from her mind, but one could try.

Normally, she would do her accounts at night, after the servants—the other servants—had departed for the village. No one but the duke and Caitlin herself would remain in Castle Lorne after dusk. And His Grace’s son, John Normington, when he was home from university. Even the duke’s valet and butler retreated at nightfall, though only as far as a cottage in the grounds.

The ghosts were a bother, with their moaning and their chatter, but Caitlin paid them no mind. She had, after all, spent more than a decade in charge of a rambunctious boy in a nursery, and knew that a little noise never hurt anyone. Besides, for some reason, the ghosts listened to her, and would be quiet if she insisted.

And if she were as much a coward as the rest of them, who would fetch John his supper or keep His Grace company when the male ghosts drove him out of his bedchamber with their carousing?

Not that the duke knew she kept him company. She sat on the secret staircase on one side of the panel that opened into the library while on the other he read a book next to the fire. She frowned down any ghost that thought to disturb him, and in time he would drift off to sleep.

After that one glorious night seven years ago, she did not dare be alone with him. She trusted Kendal, of course. It was herself she did not trust.

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Cover reveal Lost in the Tale

I’m nearly ready to release my 2017 collection of made-to-order stories. I have the stories and the cover, and I’m just waiting for the proofread files and a bit of time to set up the pre-release. No date yet, but it looks like it’ll be early September.

The short stories in the collection have only been available as print books, on Wattpad, or to party goers and newsletter subscribers as ebooks. The novella has so far been seen only by the giveaway winner who gave me the ingredients.

Like Hand-Turned Tales, Lost in the Tale will be free at all eretailers as soon as I can persuade Amazon to drop from 99c.

The Lost Wife: Teri’s refuge had been invaded: by the French, who were trying to conquer their land, and by wounded soldiers from the English forces sent to fight Napoleon’s armies. The latest injured man carried to her for nursing would be a bigger challenge than all the rest: he had once broken her heart. (short story)

The Heart of a Wolf: Ten years ago, Isadora lied to save her best friend, and lost her home and the man she loved when he would not listen to her. Ten years ago, Bastian caught his betrothed in the arms of another man, and her guilt was confirmed when she fled. Ten years on, both still burn with anger, but the lives of innocent children and the future of their werewolf kind demand that they work together. (short story)

My Lost Highland Love: Interfering relatives, misunderstandings, and mistranslations across a language barrier keep two lovers from finding one another again. The Earl of Chestlewick’s daughter comes to London from her beloved Highlands to please her father, planning to avoid the Englishman who married her and abandoned her. The Earl of Medford comes face-to-face with a ghost; a Society lady who bears the face of the Highland lass who saved his life and holds his heart. (short story)

Magnus and the Christmas Angel: Scarred by years in captivity, Magnus has fought English Society to be accepted as the true Earl of Fenchurch. Now he faces the hardest battle of all: to win the love of his wife. A night trapped in the snow with an orphaned kitten, gives Callie a Christmas gift: the chance to rediscover first love with the tattooed stranger she married. (short story)

The Lost Treasure of Lorne: For nearly 300 years, the Normingtons and the Lorimers have feuded, since a love affair ended in a curse that doomed dead Lorimers to haunt their home, the Castle of Lorne.

Now the last Marquis of Lorne, the last of the Lorimers, is one of those ghosts, and the Duke of Kendal, head of the House of Normington, holds the castle.

Kendal doesn’t care about the feud or the ghosts. He wants only to find the evidence that will legitimate the son his Lorimer bride bore him before her death, and to convince his stubborn housekeeper to marry him.

But the time allotted to the curse is running out, and his happiness depends on finding the Lost Treasure of Lorne before the 300 years draws to a close. (novella)

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Surprises on WIP Wednesday

My friend Caroline Warfield shared the following story about a conversation between the Hollywood screenwriter Charles MacArthur and Charlie Chaplin.

“How, for example, could I make a fat lady, walking down Fifth Avenue, slip on a banana peel and still get a laugh? It’s been done a million times,” said MacArthur. “What’s the best way to get the laugh? Do I show first the banana peel, then the fat lady approaching, then she slips? Or do I show the fat lady first, then the banana peel, and then she slips?”

“Neither,” said Chaplin without a moment’s hesitation. “You show the fat lady approaching; then you show the banana peel; then you show the fat lady and the banana peel together; then she steps over the banana peel and disappears down a manhole.”

This is a wonderful hint for plotting, so this week I’ve been thinking about those manhole moments. Do you have any? Where you’d set up a certain expectation for your readers and then you do something else? Please share an excerpt in the comments.

My excerpt is from The Lost Treasure of Lorne, a made-to-order story I’m writing as a party prize. The curse comes to fruition at midnight. Or does it?

The three of them met in Michael’s private sitting room to wait for midnight, and in ones and twos the ghosts seeped through the walls to join them.

“Do you suppose the servants are mistaken about the date?” John asked as the clock chimed eleven times.

“Or about the consequence,” Michael suggested. “The ghosts will stay in the castle, and not all be forfeit to the devil.”

“If the curse is true and the date is true…” Caitlin said, as the ghosts crowded around her nodding, “then we have less than an hour to find the answer.” The ghosts seemed to lose interest, wandering off again to their corners.

“I can’t think of anywhere we have not looked,” Michael grieved. “Fiona.” He stood in front of the ghost of his young wife, so that she had to look up at him. “Fiona, I want to help. Can’t you tell us how to find the treasure? And the casket with the marriage lines? Please, Fiona.”

But Fiona slid her eyes away from him and circled around him to join the others in the corner.

They watched the hands of the clock shift with glacial speed towards midnight, and still the ghosts remained, even after 31 August became 1 September. Caitlin had no idea what she expected. Anything from a silent disappearance to Satan himself arriving in clouds of fire and sweeping her relatives into the maw of hell. For nothing to happen at all was almost a let down, relieved though she was.

“Is the clock slow, perhaps?” John suggested, and they waited another interminable half hour.

“We might as well go to bed,” Caitlin said at last. “Either the legend is wrong or the date is.”

“The date!” Michael stopped short, halfway across the room to the door. “It isn’t 31 August.”

“No,” John agreed. “It is after midnight.”

“That’s not what I mean. The Calendar Act. The Calendar Act, Caitlin.”

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Secrets on WIP Wednesday

New Zealand television currently has an advert for a car that says ‘when they write the story of your life, will anyone want to read it?’ To which my response as an author is ‘I hope not’. Boring fictional stories are happy life stories.

To keep our fictional stories compelling, we authors look for plot twists and surprises. Where would we be without secrets? If all the characters and all the readers knew everything we know, the plot twists would disappear and the way to the ending would be obvious. No story.

This week, I’m inviting you to give me an excerpt about a secret. Finding it out. Becoming aware of it. Deciding to keep it. Hearing a hint at it. Whatever you wish.

Mine is from The Lost Treasure of Lorne, a made-to-order story I’m currently writing.

Caitlin spent a restless night ignoring the ghosts, which was becoming more and more difficult. She was in the kitchen and had already stoked the fire to toast a slice of bread when the cook arrived from the village, trailed by several kitchen maids.

“A bad night, was it?” Mrs McTavish asked.

Caitlin nodded, threading a slice of bread onto her toasting fork.

Mrs McTavish shook her head. “I can’t say I blame them. Just a week till the young master’s birthday and the end of the three hundred years. Sad, that. I can’t say but that the villagers will be pleased to see the castle free of its haunting, but it seems tough on the poor ghosties. If only there was someone to help young Master John fulfill the prophecy. Have a care, Mrs Moffatt. You’ll have the toast in the fire.”

Caitlin jerked her head back to the toasting fork, and returned it to the proper distance from the flame. “Just a week?” she repeated.

“Why, yes. 1485 it was that the Fourth Marquis of Lorne killed his daughter and her lover, and his father and mother for good measure. On the last day of August, so the old stories say, Lady Normington prayed to God for vengeance, and paid with her blood for the justice she sought.”

So Mrs McTavish was of the school that held the Normington woman was a prophesying saint, rather than a cursing witch. And no wonder the ghosts were growing so agitated. But wait. “Master John is a Normington, Mrs McTavish,” she pointed out.

“Half Lorimer and living in Castle Lorne. That’s been enough to doom someone to be a ghost afore now. He is Lorimer enough to find the treasure. But it is too late. Two, the lady said, and he the last Lorimer of Lorne.

This time, the toast caught alight before she noticed. It was not just what Mrs McTavish had said that distracted her, but the reaction of the ghosts. Crowding into the kitchen, row on row, even standing in the fireplace itself, they were cheering and clapping.

Two Lorimers. She had known that two were required, but — like the cook — she had believed it was too late. The King’s heralds had hunted down all branches of the Lorimer family tree and so had the Duke of Kendal, looking for one surviving twig, and coming up empty. They were wrong.

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Letters on WIP Wednesday

letter writerIn these days of email, instant messaging, Skype, and a myriad of other ways to connect with our loved ones, we find it hard to imagine how much distant separated families and lovers in the past, and how important letters were to keep them connected.

I am working with my friend Mariana Gabrielle on Never Kiss a Toad (being published in parts on Wattpad), where the lovers are separated for years, with letters the only contact they’re permitted, and those vetted by the heroine’s father. But my piece today is not from Toad, but from one of my short stories. I wrote Magnus and the Christmas Angel for a prize as part of my support for Cat Day, and I’m currently rewriting it as a novella, to bring some of the backstory into the foreground.

As always, share your excerpts about keeping in touch: any method, from letters and verbal messages through modern social media and the telephone, to the ansible or whatever other sci-fi device your imagination has given future heroes and heroines.

Mine doesn’t quote a letter. Instead, they’re discussing years of lettersMagnus and the Christmas Angel.

Magnus remembered her letters? From the day he left, she had written to him. A few lines a day, a letter a week, a bundle of letters posted every month. Trivial stories of a country girl on her ordinary daily round. And he had written back, letters from all down the coast of Africa, then up the other side and into Asia, and across the Pacific. Letters full of exotic stories and drawings of strange and wonderful places.

How boring he must have found her dull and commonplace ramblings.

“I kept writing,” she blurted. Letter after letter, at first sent in the hopes the missing ship would finally appear, and later put into the chest where she kept the much read, much cried over letters he had written in return.

“After my ship went down?” Magnus asked, his eyes warm.

Until the evening before her date at the altar to marry Magnus’s cousin. That letter, much smudged where she wept on it, and creased where she crushed it in her hands, lay with the others in her chest at the Abbey.

Callie nodded.

“I should like to read them,” Magnus said.

Callie shook her head, helplessly. Her domestic ramblings, her outpouring of grief after her father died, her increasing desperation as her brother spiralled down into ruin, stripping the estate to spend his wealth and eventually her dowry on horses, gambling, drink, loose women, and ever more extravagant schemes to rescue their fortunes. Abetted and egged on by his dear friend Lewis Colbrooke, who somehow always seemed to be the winner in any game of chance, and to come unscathed out of any risky venture. Until the swine won even the deeds to Blessings, and Callie took refuge with Squire Ambrose and his wife.

Magnus took her shake as refusal. “Not if you do not wish me to,” he said, the warm eagerness in his eyes turning to disappointment.

“I am afraid you will find them dull,” she explained. And far too revealing. She had censored nothing, thinking no-one would ever see them.

“Never dull.” The warmth had returned to Magnus’s eyes, and his voice slowed to the meditative tones, like rich brandied honey, that always sent a shiver through her. “They were home to me, Callie. I read them over and over and again, until they were thin with touching, and they brought me here, to Blessings and to the Abbey; to my own land, and to you. When the ship went down, I had your latest package of letters with me, inside my shirt, and as they hauled me out of the water, all I could think of was that I had a little part of you still with me.”