Philosophic ramblings

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Reviewing the Reviews – and this author’s promise to readers

One piece of advice people give newbie authors is not to read their reviews. It is great advice I’m sure, but I’ve never taken it. I cannot resist seeing what readers have to say about what I write. Overall, it’s a good experience–my books get mostly 4 and 5 stars ratings with the occasional 3, 2 or even 1 to keep me humble. I often learn from a negative review, and they seldom make me feel bad. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and no one book suits every reader.

All reviews are positive reviews in the sense that:

  • they tell other readers what to expect–even a negative review, by saying what a reader doesn’t like, might help the book to appeal to another reader with different tastes
  • the sheer number of them acts on the bookseller’s algorithms to boost the book’s visibility.

Now and again, a review gets up my nose, usually by stridently insisting that I have not done my research, when I have, in fact, done my research and the reviewer has been taken in by The Tiffany Effect. I always want to go back and give them my references. But one can’t, of course. Arguing with reviewers is against etiquette.

The negative review one of my books received recently was more along the lines of “this is not the book for me” (and no, I’m not going to say which book or which reviewer, or even how many stars. Again, against etiquette). The reviewer didn’t want to read about what happened to the heroine, and shut the book at that point. Fair enough. Their taste, their call.

What irritated me a little was a remark about being disappointed in me, to which I wanted to say, “Look, sunshine, the blurb told you what to expect, and you chose to read it anyway.” But. Etiquette.

My promise to readers

I don’t promise that everything in my books is going to be palatable. My villains are often very bad people who do really nasty stuff, and if they can get their hands on the hero or the heroine, they’ll try to make victims of them, and sometimes succeed, at least temporarily. I do promise four things:

  1. My heroes and heroines will never stay victims.
  2. My blurb will usually hint at the issues and topics in the story. If something is likely to be triggering, I’ll spell it out in the blurb or even in a warning under the blurb.
  3. The key villain or villains will be beaten and the danger facing my main characters will be resolved.
  4. My hero and heroine will always have a happy ending.

So please, if you’ve read one of my books, take a few minutes to tell other readers what you liked, what you didn’t like, and how the book made you feel. This author thanks you.

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After the night, the dawn. After the winter, the spring.

This is a Christian faith statement. If you are likely to be offended, don’t read on. If you do, I hope you can find parallels in your own spiritual beliefs.

I was much struck today by part of the reading for the Easter Mass. Mary Magdalen comes running to the apostles to say that the body of Jesus has been taken. She went, as women have done throughout time and space, to perform the last loving service a human being can give their dear departed–to prepare the corpse as her culture demanded–and the body wasn’t there. She assumed the worst, as you would. Someone had stolen the body. To the terrible events of the trial and crucifixion had been added an insult even to the poor broken remains.

But, of course, the next scene in the story lets her know she had the wrong answer. He was no longer in the tomb, true. But the evidence had led her to the wrong conclusion. The worst had not happened, but the best. The end was not the end, but a new beginning. Even as she went out into the garden to weep, he was already risen.

That particular scenario may be unique in human history, but the mind set hasn’t changed. We look around at the signs of growing disfunction, of despair, of the breakdown of society. It is all over, we say. All we can do is sit in the garden and weep.

But we in the Catholic tradition call ourself an Easter people for a reason. Let us remember on this solemn and glorious feast day that, no matter how bad things look, Christ may already be walking in the garden. The night is already at an end. Spring has begun.

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Terrorism and democracy

Edward I was nearly killed by an Assassin during Lord Edward’s Crusade, most likely sent by the Mamluk Sultan Baibars, in order to remove his opposition to a 10-year truce with the Christian states at Jerusalem. He narrowly survived poisoning from the blade of the Assassin. – Gustave Doré, 19th Century

I’ve noticed an unsettling trend recently in democratic societies around the world. People who are unable to convince the majority to support them are turning to disruption to make their point. Tipping out milk in supermarkets to object to the farming of animals for food. Stopping traffic during the rush hour to make a case for trains, or the removal of mask mandates, or preferential treatment for a particular occupation, or any of a dozen causes.

In a tyranny, when free speech is suppressed and people cannot assemble to make their case, such reactions may be the route to social change. In a democracy, where peaceful protest is permitted and those of like mind can organise to convince others, there are more productive ways to change society. And if your efforts are not succeeding, perhaps it is because the majority do not agree with you. That’s democracy, too.

Protest marches and the like often cause some disruption as a byproduct. But those I’ve detailed above seem to have been organised and intended to cause maximum inconvenience. The fact that so many organisers are clear that they’re going to repeat their actions over and over until they get what they want borders on standover tactics and blackmail. They have three fundamental things in common with terrorism. First, they want to bring about change by coersion or intimidation. Second, they seek to achieve this by inconveniencing (in the case of activism) or attacking (in case of terrorism) the wider public–ordinary people who are merely going about their business. Third, they claim that their actions are required to protect or advance a moral principle, whether religious or secular.

Let’s define terrorism as the systematic threat or use of violence against innocent people to intimidate a political group into accepting the demands of the terrorist. Pouring milk on a supermarket floor is a long way from bombing a kindergarten. But it feels to me as if it is on the continuum.

Historian trace terrorism back a long way, to the terrorist campaigns of the Zealots against the Romans in Judea, and to those of the Shi-ite Muslim sect, the hashashin, against Sunni Muslims and medieval Christendom. More recently the Reign of Terror was an example of the use of terror to achieve governmental ends–Robespierre and his colleagues used it after revolutionaries seized power in the French Revolution to maintain power and supress political rivals.

And so we come to more modern times, when terrorism is practiced by authoritarian governments against their citizens and against the citizens of territories they invade, as well as by pressure groups who want to force political, social, religious and economic change.

Alexander Ulyanov, who tried assassinate Czar Alexander III in the 1880s, summed it up as: “is the only form of defense to which a minority, strong only in terms
of its spiritual strength and in its knowledge of the rightness of its beliefs, can resort against the physical strength of the majority.” Admittedly, that wasn’t a democracy by any means. But taking the words at their face value, they are plain wrong. In a democracy, where everyone has a right to a voice and a vote, a minority who do not agree with the beliefs of the majority has no place trying to intimidate the government into giving the minority beliefs preference over those of the majority.

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A bird needs two wings to fly

“We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill.”
― Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull

The terms ‘right wing’ and ‘left wing’ carry a lot of emotional weight today. They have their origins, though, in a concrete description, and in the National Assembly of early modern France.

It was the government of the revolution, meeting in the aftermath of the storming of the Bastille. Their job was to write a new constitution and one of the important issues they needed to settle was whether the king would have a right of veto over the decisions of the assembly.  Those who thought he should sat on the right of the president of the assembly. Those who thought he should not sat on the left.

The terms were used in the newspapers reporting on the legislature, and swiftly came to represent those who wanted to follow tradition–the right, and those who wanted more change–the left.

Fast forward to today, and a number of people have applied the term in a different way. Billy Graham has been quoted as saying that he’s not for the right wing or the left wing, but for the whole bird. Birds need their wings. The wings allow flight, but both are needed. The far extremes of the wings twist and turn according to the position of the bird, this flexibility providing an aerodynamic advantage. Yet all things in balance. The bird needs both wings for lift, both sets of flight feathers. A bird whose wings have been clipped cannot take flight. And the wing does not exist for itself. It exists for the bird.

As a metaphor for community, it works well. Our community is the whole bird. To thrive, it needs both stability–the function of the right–and an openness to new things–the function of the left. Even the extreme wing tips are important: the extreme right can be a brake on change for change’s sake; the extreme left a goad to try new ideas when tradition does not have the answers to never-before-seen conditions and problems. But, for the most part, in a sensible and logical community, left and right, like the wings of a bird, can work together, exchanging information, and coming up with joint strategies to support flight.

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A prayer-poem for Sunday

St. Francis of Assisi

Would I might wake St. Francis in you all,
Brother of birds and trees, God’s Troubadour,
Blinded with weeping for the sad and poor;
Our wealth undone, all strict Franciscan men,
Come, let us chant the canticle again
Of mother earth and the enduring sun.
God make each soul the lonely leper’s slave;
God make us saints, and brave.

Vachel Lindsay
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Why I write — and why historical romance

At the weekly book talk that my Bluestocking Belles’ sisters and I hold on Facebook, today’s topic was ‘Why do we do what we do’. That is, why do we authors write and sell books.

Great topic, so I thought I’d answer it again here.

Why do I write?

I write because otherwise the stories build up in my head and if I don’t shape them and form them into a completed story, I’m afraid my head will explode. This happens. When for some reason I can’t write, I begin to have really weird vivid dreams that wake me up, and snippets of story also attack me during the day when I ought to be doing something else. I

It is true that when the writing is going well, I also have vivid and specific dreams in which my subconscious minds solves plot problems. I also either can’t get to sleep or wake up from sleep with a section of story that I just have to get down. And I think in story all day long, even when I should be doing something else.

On the other hand, when I’m not writing, I also get jittery, anxious and bad tempered. Writing keeps me even.

If you think it sounds like some sort of addiction, you are probably right.

Why do I write historical romance?

I write what I love. I have written in a number of genres, but the first fiction book I published was an historical romance (Candle’s Christmas Chair), and I wrote that while waiting for beta reading feedback on the first novel I’d finished in nearly forty years, also historical romance (Farewell to Kindness).

When I started Farewell, I had collected more than 40 plots, most of them historical romance and all of those regency. Regency romance is one of my favourite genres for my own reading. I find it absorbing when it is done well. And when it isn’t, I’m inspired to do better. I find the Regency era fascinating, and a great medium through which to think about issues and challenges that face couples, families and our society today.

Here’s a blog I wrote five years ago about the ten reasons I read (and write) historicals. Still true.

The other reason for sticking (mostly) to Regency is commercial. I haven’t finished the Regency series I’ve started, and I owe those unwritten books to my readers before I wander off into another genre. Furthermore, I’m (somewhat) known under my Regency pen name. If I write speculative fiction or contemporary mysteries or even in another era, do I need another pen name? Will I need to find an entire group of new readers? Will I upset my current readers? (Genuine questions. I don’t know.)

Why do I publish?

I write for myself, in other words. But, as Caroline pointed out in our chat, I revise, polish and publish for readers.

Readers are an essential part of what makes my story into a book. As long as it is only in my head and even as long as I am the only one that has read it, it doesn’t truly exist as a book. It’s just a story I’m muttering to myself. A book has readers. The reader brings her (or his — I’m an equal opportunities romance writer) experiences and emotions to the story, interprets the characters and events through her filters, and get stuff out of the story that I didn’t know I put there.\

Every book is a collaboration between the writer and the readers, and they make the magic together.

I sell my books because the money I earn funds covers, professional copy editors, subscriptions to all the services that allow me to produce and market my books, research materials such as course in Regency London and books about Napoleonic France, and a myriad of other expenses. If I didn’t sell my books, I couldn’t afford to write them.

And I sell my books in the hopes that I will one day sell enough to make a surplus. We are now living on retirement income, so a bit of extra income would be much appreciated.

So that’s why I write

How about you? If you’re a reader, why do you read the books you choose to give part of your life to? If you’re a writer, why do you write?

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If you’d like to join the Bluestocking Belles and chat about books and writing, we meet every Saturday at 1pm. (New York time — it is currently at 5am Sunday morning for me in New Zealand. Roll on daylight savings changes at both ends!) The post in which we chat in the comments is always pinned to the top of the group, which is: https://www.facebook.com/groups/BellesBrigade We’d love to see you there.

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Writing love

I’ve been thinking about love. It is, at base, what I write about. In both of my current works-in-progress, the hero and heroine have known one another for years, but faced powerful barriers to having a future together. I need to show a love that changes and grows as they do, until they can work through the problems.

In novellas, and particularly in short stories, I often make the hero and heroine separated lovers, old friends or at least acquaintances. Shorter formats give less time for the relationship to develop. People who don’t know one another can fall in love in a flash, but I need enough space to convince the reader that this love will last. That mixture of euphoria, infatuation, and lust that kicks our brain into a mating frenzy is wonderful while it lasts, but love is more than that.

I’ve written elsewhere about levels of intimacy, and why I don’t want to write at the shallow end of the intimacy pool. Today’s philosophical rambling is more about how to take things deep.

C.S. Lewis wrote a book called The Four Loves. He used Latin names but in essence, he talks about:

  • affection — the love that arises from familiarity
  • friendship — the love that is based on shared interests, activities, and points of view
  • romantic — the love that binds a couple together and expresses itself in physical intimacy
  • spiritual — the love God (whomever or whatever you suppose God to be) gives to us and that we give to God, which we show by giving to those in need, whether known or not, whether worthy or not.

You can see that you can burrow deeper into each of these, so you’ve got a kind of moving scale:

  • affection — at one end, the slightly increased comfort a person feels with a stranger who belongs to the same club or who went to the same school; at the other, the love between parent and child
  • friendship — at one end, people who have chatted with one another occasionally in an online group or met over coffee after bowling club; at the other, people who share ideas, experiences and activities, and who will put their own lives on hold to help one another
  • romantic — at the one end, the flash-in-the-pan experience that is largely lust and need; at the other, a deep and unwavering commitment where the happiness of one is needed for the happiness of the other
  • spiritual — at one end, spare change in a beggar’s bowl; at the other, a life lived entirely in service to rescuing sex slaves in Thailand or building wells in Kenya or providing school lunches in Baltimore or some other specific group of people in need.

Of course, in a couple worth reading about, by the end of the novel you’re going to have all four, to at least some level. At least one of them needs to start with some sense of commitment to those in need (because without that, they’re not the kind of people I want to spend several hours with). Over the course of the book, I want to see them develop quite a bit of affection, a good friendship, and a strong attraction that goes beyond the basics.  It takes time for those to grow. It takes time to show them.

It’s easier in a novel. Easier still in a series. One of the reasons I like mystery series with a couple as the main protagonists is that the author has time to explore how love changes and deepens, but you can get some of the way even in a novella. You can even hint at it in a short story.

That’s the challenge I set myself every story I write. That’s what I mean by a love story.

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The wealth issue

Hall of Mirrors at Versaille, France, 17th century

I have a problem with writing about wealthy aristocrats or oligarchs.

Since the invention of agriculture, sumptuous living has depended on the poverty of others. Wealth inequality began when the first ruler of a city state set some of his people to work in the fields and some to bop on the head any field workers who might object to the assignment, while he and his favourites got looked after. Sure, they had the tough job of telling everyone else what to do, and of going out to fight other city states when one side or the other wanted to extend their power and their authority. Conspicuous consumption led to envy on the part of others and a lust for a share. But for the peasants in the field and the servants scrubbing the pots, who was on top made very little difference.

Those of us who grew up in middle-class enclaves in Western countries after the second world war tend to forget this reality. In the 1950s and 60s, the oligarchs of our nations were carrying on the practice of centuries, exporting the exploitation of workers to poorer countries where their misery was out of sight. And few of us moved among the poor of our own countries often enough and humbly enough to recognise that theories about self-inflicted poverty where lies to protect the rich.

In the 18th century, Adam Smith wrote:

‘Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many.’

In France in that century, the five hundred poor had had enough. Conspicuous consumption led to envy on the part of others and a lust for a share. The excesses of the French Revolution were horrible. Innocent people died in their masses, and their wealth or lack of it, their guilt or innocence, didn’t make a shard of difference. I’m delighted that the United Kingdom, from which my family lines come, managed to avoid following the French path to the guillotine. At least some of the British leaders saw the danger and shared power in a way that didn’t happen in France. Also, the government suppressed any hint of revolution with a ruthless hand. And the English middle-class had power enough and wealth enough not to follow their poorer brethren into blood, fire, and gore.

It was a fairly close run thing, at times.

The Music Room, Brighton Pavilion, England, Regency era

The noble classes about whom most of us Regency authors write had huge inherited wealth, though the value of agriculture-based enterprise was waning, leading to brutal land grabs through the enclosure acts and the Highland clearances. Even those who behaved fairly to their tenants came to their wealth through dubious means.

‘It is very well known that in England (and the same will be found in other countries) the great landed estates, now held in descent, were plundered from the quiet inhabitants at the conquest. The possibility did not exist of acquiring such estates honestly… That they were not acquired by trade, by commerce, by manufactures, by agriculture or by any reputable employment is certain. How then were they acquired? Blush, aristocracy, to hear your origin, for your progenitors were Thieves…When they had committed the robbery, they endeavoured to lose the disgrace of it, by sinking their real names under fictious ones, which they called Titles. It is ever the practice of Felons to act in this manner.’ (Thomas Paine)

A new class of industrialists and merchants were growing fortunes on the backs of sugar and tea plantations staffed by slaves, factories and mines staffed by underpaid workers including children as young as five, and gunboat diplomacy around the globe. In the middle of the 19th century, John Stuart Mills wrote:

‘The social arrangements of modern Europe commenced from a distribution of property which was the result… of conquest and violence: …the system still retains many and large traces of its origins. The laws of property have never yet conformed to the principles on which the justification of private property rests. They have made property of things which never ought to be property, and absolute property where only a qualified property ought to exist. They have not held the balance fairly between human beings, but have heaped impediments upon some, to give advantage to others; they have purposely fostered inequalities, and prevented all from starting fair in the race.’

Mills believed (and so do I, for that matter) that there’s nothing wrong with owning stuff that you’ve acquired through your own personal efforts. But owning twenty or fifty or eighty times as much as the average Joe? While paying starvation wages? That can’t be right.

So I make my aristocrats supporters of philanthropic causes, and I send them into Parliament to fight for fairer laws. They wear expensive clothing and surround themselves with the expensive trappings of their status, but I try to make them thoughtful about such things. It’s a balance.

But it’s a hard one, especially as I watch the 21st century repeating the mistakes of the past eleven thousand years. We have our own Palaces of Versailles, our own Brighton Pavilions.

Manhattan Townhouse, 21st Century

The richest United States families have an average income of 80 times the income of the average worker, and every country of the world has its own oligarchs, who would rather spend money on security and protection that share what they’ve managed to acquire.

It just isn’t fair.

 

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A time to remember; a time to grow

It is Waitangi Weekend in New Zealand — the day we commemorate the treaty on which our nation is founded. New Zealand is a country with three languages: English, Maori and New Zealand sign. It is also a multicultural land, with many threads interwoven to form a rich tapestry of life in the South Pacific. Waitangi Weekend reminds us that, in a sense, it has only two peoples: tangata whenua (the people of the land, who were here before the whalers, the sealers, the missionaries and the settlers) and tangata tiriti (all the rest of us, who are here by right of the Treaty of Waitangi, a treaty signed between a representative of Queen Victoria and the Maori chiefs of New Zealand 181 years ago). As our national anthem, God defend New Zealand, says: “Men of every creed and race gathered here before Thy Face”.

At Mass today, we sang the national anthem – it is, after all, a hymn. We sang the first verse in Maori, and then in English.

I’ve often thought how peaceable our national anthem is – so many other anthems are military in origin and martial in flavour. Every time I hear it, these words strike me: ‘from dissension, envy, hate and corruption guard our state’. How many other countries pray for freedom from corruption every time they sing their national anthem?

I looked it up this evening – there are websites that have collected over 400 national anthems from all over the world. It was intriguing.

Only a small percentage are prayers/hymns; most of those ask God to save or bless the country/the monarch, many ask Him for victory over enemies… “Send her victorious,” “God who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet.” The national anthem of the Isle of Man celebrates the gifts of God, and in particular the seas that keep the Isle of Man safe.

The Japanese national anthem is a tanka, a five line, 31 syllable poem: “May the reign of the Emperor continue for a thousand, nay, eight thousand generations and for the eternity that it takes for small pebbles to grow into a great rock and become covered with moss.”

Some of the words of national anthems have been left behind by time. Perhaps the US Americans don’t sing anymore the verse that includes the words: “Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave, From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave.” Australia has officially dropped the verses that refer to Mother Britain. Stirring though the music is, the words of Flower of Scotland don’t seem to me particularly encouraging, suggesting, as they do, that Scots are no longer as brave or as powerful: “when will we see your like again?” Ireland’s national anthem also recalls past battles: “In Erin’s cause, come woe or weal, ‘Mid cannons’ roar and rifles peal.”

As far as my researches reveal, a prayer for protection from corruption is unique among national anthems. Today, in the light of the events of 2020, I was particularly struck by the line in the first verse that asks “Make her praises heard afar.” Well, that happens.

As well as some amazing images of my lovely country, the video above has all the verses of God Defend New Zealand, including this one – we may be peaceful, but we’re not pushovers:

Peace, not war, shall be our boast,
But, should foes assail our coast,
Make us then a mighty host,
God defend our free land.
Lord of battles in Thy might,
Put our enemies to flight,
Let our cause be just and right,
God defend New Zealand.