Romance novel genre

by

Two preorders for your reading pleasure

Have you heard about these two preorders? Both are part of multi-author series, and both are coming out later this year.

The Blossoming of the Wallflower

Book 21 in The Revenge of the Wallflowers

As a gardener, Merrilyn Parkham-Smythe, was happy to be called a wallflower. Wallflowers were tenacious, long blooming, colourful and reliable plants, easy to care for as long as they had a fair share of sun. Like them, Merrilyn had no objection to providing providing background to the showier and more troublesome ladies of Society. She did object to being slighted and bullied by those highly praised blooms and their male counterparts.

The gentleman next door, for example. He had killed an entire herbacious border, pruned all the flowers off her magnolia tree, refused to see her when she called, and failed to reply to her letters of complaint. He richly deserved what he had coming. Didn’t he?

Justin Falconbridge hadn’t meant to offend the lady next door. He supposed he should have known that treating his carriageway with lime and sulfur to kill the weeds might affect the plants next door, but they would grow again, wouldn’t they? And wasn’t he entitled to cut off the flowers that dropped onto said carriage way and made it slipperly underfoot?

It was a pity she only spoke to him to abuse him, because he could think of a better use for those perfectly shaped lips than to hurl abuse at him. Since he couldn’t be in her presence without thoughts that were inappropriate in the presence of an innocent lady, he had to ignore her. Sooner or later, she would give up and leave him alone. Which is what he wanted. Wasn’t it?

***

This one is out in July. You can preorder it from most major retailers: Books2read https://books2read.com/TBotW

If you’d like to see the other books in the series, check here. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CKHNCQ6T

The Widow’s Christmas Rogue

Book 30 in The Wicked Widow’s League

Jessica Lady Colyton has no intention of being a wicked widow and has no time for rogues.  No time for men, in fact. Her father and her brothers were rogues enough for a lifetime, and her deceased husband was a scoundrel of quite a different type. However, she has joined the Wicked Widow’s League, and is grateful for their help to get her back on her feet after her husband’s will proves to be just one more blow from a controlling and manipulative man.

They have even organised for her to have a week’s holiday in the country. She blesses them right up until she finds a naked rogue in her bed.

Benjamin Lord Somerford is no rogue, unlike the father and brother whose deaths brought him a title and a barrow load of responsibilities that give him little time to play. He refuses an invitation to his sister’s Christmas house party because he has no time for the beauties she has undoubtedly invited to tempt him into matrimony.

When he wakes up in a strange bed, naked and tied down, he has no idea how he came to be there and wants no part whatever plot is underway. Thankfully, the lady who finds him is of the same mind. When a snowstorm prevents them from leaving, they must work together not just to survive but to avoid scandal.

***

This one will be a treat for next Christmas. Again, you can preorder from most major retailers: Books2read https://books2read.com/u/m26zvd

If you’d like to see the other books in the series, check here. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BFJ29XQ2

by

Podcasts on Historical Romance

Hello, household bubble dwellers. Missing book club and those chats at work about your favourite reading? Maybe these podcasts might help:

Interviews with authors of new books in historical fiction, from apple podcasts.

A variety of historical romance podcasts collected by Player FM. Includes some classic books, one on reading steamy romance with your mum, interviews with authors, and a discussion on Outlander.

One that calls itself 20 top romance podcasts you must follow in 2020. It is broader than just historical, but includes Tea & Strumpets, which discusses Regency, and I also see names like Julia Quinn and Sarah Maclean.

by

Feminism and the romance genre

 

“I don’t see how you can say romances are feminist,”” said the gentleman, waving a red flag in front of me on a day my opinions were bullish. His wife, who writes historical fiction, was not so adamant, but also not convinced by my argument that ‘feminist’ is a fair label to apply to any publishing sector in which:

  • the participants (readers, writers, authors, editors, agents) are overwhelmingly women
  • the plots are driven by the needs and actions of a main character who is a woman.

Further discussion disclosed that the man’s main objection is that romances play into a false belief that a permanent romantic attachment — a happy ever after — is the only goal for a woman, and that a story in which a woman finds happiness in her career or her craft is more feminist.

HEA is on the label!

I think the argument has a couple of flaws.

First, such a book would not be shelved as a romance. In the end, genre is a sorting device. A romance is a book in which the main plot arc deals with a taking a romance to the expectation of a happy ending. A mystery is a book in which the main plot arc deals with solving a mystery. A Western is a book with cowboys. And so on.

Second, and more important, I see a hint of the great divide between male and female sensibilities that has brought us to this #metoo point in our cultural history. As human beings, we are social creatures, needing intimacy for our health and wellbeing. Give a baby all the necessities of food, drink, warmth, and shelter, but never cuddle it or give it undivided attention, and it will fail to thrive. It may die, but if it lives it will be with permanent emotional scars.

Intimacy is a human, not a female, need

As adults, we seek intimacy in our relationships with friends, partners, and family members. And we are miserably unhappy if we can’t have it. A romance deals with one kind of intimacy; that with a sexual partner. For me to believe in the happy-ever-after, the couple also must reach some level of emotional, intellectual, and spiritual intimacy — but without the physical it isn’t a romance.

Romances, and some literary novels, are the only stories in which the search for intimacy is central to the plot. How sad that something so central to the lives of all human beings is relegated to books dismissed with appellations such as ‘chick lit’, ‘bodice rippers’, ‘mommy porn’.

So my fundamental objection to my friend’s position is not to his view of romance books (which, by the way, had not been informed by reading any), but by his definition of feminism.

 A feminist is not a woman trying to be like a man

In essence, he saw a feminist as a woman who did the things men are interested in doing, and a feminist book as one that was about women succeeding at things traditionally done by men.

I like those books, too. I’m all for women doing what interests them; yes, and men, too. If you’re the best crochet artist in Eketahuna, I don’t care about your gender. You go for it!

But I categorically deny that a woman has to be like a man in order to be interesting or worth reading about. And I also deny that a genre that deals in intimacy, and in hopeful endings, is — for that reason — anti-feminist. The desire for a lasting intimacy is basic to our humanity.

It seems to me that Western culture has steadily narrowed the options for men who seek such intimacy, teaching them to be afraid of emotions and to focus on the physical. Having sex with multiple women has, in many cultures, been a symbol of a man’s power, which the poor dears seem to confuse with their virility.

Hence the joke. What do you call a woman who behaves like a man? Answer: a slut.

We are failing our boys

In our culture, such behaviour is sold to our young males as desirable — in fictional and real life representations, both main stream and pornographic. They have no idea they’ve been sold a pig in a poke. No wonder so many of them live in quiet despair — or die young.

As for the impact on young women, and what romances have to do with it, I’ll leave that for another post.

by

The Jude Knight Manifesto

The classic bodice ripper cover shows the woman’s ambivalence about the situation she has landed in. Interestingly, some claim that these covers, whose artists were the same comic artists who had been creating superhero magazines, were actually designed to appeal to male booksellers.

At the day job this week, we had a workshop on personal branding, and did a number of exercises to find the authentic self we wanted to project when dealing with clients.

I had no trouble defining my essence: the core values and passions that define me. I’ve spent the past four years thinking about them as I created the brand for Jude Knight. They don’t change between Jude Knight the storyteller and Judy Knighton the plain English business consultant, because they are the real me.

I’m a storyteller with an abiding compassion for people and a deep desire to contribute to the wellbeing of individuals and communities.

This post results from mulling over the workshop and also several blogs and articles I’ve read this week.

Sherry Thomas, in an interview, talked about romance writing in the current political environment. She has received some flak for her views from people who seem to think she is planning to turn her novels into a political rant, but I didn’t take it that way.

To me, it seems inevitable that one’s values and attitudes will influence the themes we write about, the characters we glorify, and what we consider to be happy endings. Yes, and whether wealth and power are shown as corrupting or as virtuous, which is a very strong political statement indeed.

My values are informed by my life experiences and my Catholic faith, and I try to live by them in all I say and do. My books will always reward a passion for justice and community, and ultimately punish greed and selfishness. (Which life doesn’t always do, at least the bit of it we see, so I should, because in the world I create, I can.)

Laurie Penny, in the Unforgiving Minute, has produced one of the best #metoo articles I’ve read (and I’ve read lots). She challenges men to stop making the current post-Weinstein world about them and their desire to get laid.

In a world where men take their view of good sex from Hugh Hefner and women suffer the consequences, I firmly believe that writing bodice rippers is a degenerate act. I’m defining the term as a book set in the past, with a young, virginal heroine and a more powerful (because older, richer, or simply more brutal) hero who forces her to have non-consensual sex until they fall in love and live happily ever after. Rapist-turned-true-hero, and no-doesn’t-mean-no. For a man to write such a book is an act of violence. For a woman to do so is treachery.

My books will reward relationships founded on mutual respect. If that’s not where my couple start out, it is where they will end up. The most rakish of my heroes will need to face the emptiness in their souls where intimacy should be, and so will the heroine I have in mind for a series I’m involved with in 2019.

I strongly believe that the romance genre is feminist, in the sense that it is a genre in which women are subjects, not objects; in which women’s concerns and women’s actions are centre stage;  in which women’s sexual pleasure is based on female, not male experience.

Not all romances are feminist. I’ve dnfed* some shocking pieces of adolescent male fantasy masquerading as romance erotica, and I’ve read many stories with heroes who are controlling despots with heroines who like that in a man.

My stories won’t always have strong heroines. They won’t always have heroes who, at the beginning of the story, honour the identity of their love interest and partner with them. But that’s always going to be my goal: a true abiding love based on mutual understanding and respect.

If I am to be true to myself, I can do no other.

(More on the covers that gave a genre a bad name here and here.)

*dnf = do not finish

by

Rakes, Rapists and Alpha-jerks

This is the flip side of my ‘In praise of decent men‘ post. In this post, I’m going to talk about ‘heroes’ you won’t find in my stories (and a little about heroines that I won’t write, too).

You can’t reform a rake

One enduring trope of romantic fiction is that reformed rakes make the best husbands. Nothing wrong with that. It ignores inconveniences like illegitimate children and sexually transmitted diseases, and embarrassments like knowing your husband has slept with half the women you meet at any given social occasion, but this is, after all, romantic fiction.

It also makes the possibly erroneous assumption that said rake’s conquests depended on an application of charm and technique that could later be applied to the lucky wife. I’ve written comparing the rake of fiction with the real rakes of history, but again, let it pass. Undoubtedly, some rakes were both charming and skilled, so why not the hero?

I don’t object to heroes who have been rakes and who reform to become devoted husbands. Some of my favourite novels have ex-rake heroes.

What I don’t like and won’t write is the concept that all the rake needed to reform was the love of a good woman. I mean, I know this is fiction, so I’m not looking for fact, but I am looking for truth. We all know what happens to any female who takes this trope seriously and tries to apply it in real life. Maybe he’ll behave for a few weeks, or even a few months. But soon enough someone else’s perfume lingers around his shirts, and he spends more nights out than home (working late again? Yeah, right.)

You can’t reform a rake. The rake can choose to reform, and falling in love may be the impetus for the final shift in behaviours. But I’m looking for signs that he was already changing his way of life before the heroine came along, or the book goes.

At the worst end of the scale is the guy who falls in lust with the woman, seeks to seduce her thinking that will get her out of his system, and then is converted to true love by the power of her Magic Vagina.

Do Not Finish. Hate that Hero. Don’t much like that Heroine.

No doesn’t mean try harder

Rape was purportedly popular in romantic fiction decades ago. The heroine is in the hero’s power, and he uses that power to coerce her into sex, which she absolutely loves. She then goes on to fall in love with him, thanks to the potency of his Magic Penis.

I’m okay with seduction, and it is even more fun when it’s a game two people are playing, neither one aware of the intentions of the other. I absolutely abhor forced seduction, of any kind.

An arranged marriage story can be beautiful, if carefully handled. I’ve even read a story or two that I really liked where the heroine is in the hero’s power. If he’s the right kind of hero, he will leave her room to give true consent, and if he doesn’t, he’s no hero.

If one of the sexual partners has not consented, then it isn’t intercourse, it’s rape. Simple. Doesn’t matter if the unwilling partner then enjoys the physical sensations. In fact, the betrayal of one’s own body probably makes it worse.

Do Not Finish That Book. Throw At Wall.

Alpha-jerks are still jerks

Woman who trusted an Alpha-jerk

The Alpha, Beta, Gamma classifications have fallen out of favour in animal psychology, so I’m told. Pack dynamics are more complex than people thought. But they still have some useful application in writing romantic fiction, as I’ve discussed in a post called ‘Alpha and Omega‘.

An alpha hero is a natural leader; the man everyone turns to when things go wrong, the man who makes the decisions and keeps the group strong and together.

That doesn’t make him a good man or a good hero. It just makes him the boss.

Is he bossy, domineering, unwilling to listen to anyone else or to give credit to others? He’s not a hero; he’s an alpha-jerk. Stand clear. Do Not Breed From This Man.

by

I write refreshment fiction

I have a few friends who say they’re backing away from writing, reading, or posting about what they call escapist fiction, because they feel world events are such that they have no right to be indulging in, or promoting, anything so frivolous.

They have a right to their view and their feelings. For my part, I don’t feel that way.

Why is it bad to escape?

We know, from the tone and context in which the term is used, that escapist fiction is a bad thing. But we don’t know why. Fiction, by its nature, permits the reader to leave their everyday world and enter a different reality, a world where events have some kind of structure and resolution. The qualifier ‘escapist’ at least implies that the fictional world will be different from the real world in that the resolution will be pleasing to the reader.

Escape has social, emotional, and health benefits, which is why we take weekends and holidays; why we go for a walk in a park or along a beach. If we need a break, we tend to do something that we find refreshing. Escape helps us return fit and ready for whatever life throws at us.

I have spent much of my life with ill health, and have at the same time been through the usual curve balls life throws at us (children with disabilities, financial downturns, betrayals by friends and family). Yes, fiction has always been my escape—an opportunity for a micro holiday someplace where whatever was happening wasn’t real, and I wasn’t the one who had to fix it.

No. Escape in itself is not a bad thing.

Is escapist fiction fundamentally bad fiction?

I was one of those young people told to stop reading rubbish and spend my time with worthwhile books, by which my mentors meant the classics or the earnest works of the current literary mavens. Leaving aside the fact that many of the classics were regarded as escapist in their day, what exactly do the critics consider escapist?

The following table is adapted from a university source.

Escapist fiction Literary fiction
Designed to entertain Designed to make the reader think
Simplistic, predictable, and often linear plots More complicated plots, often non-linear
Clear unambiguous endings, usually happy Ambiguous or unhappy endings
Simplistic, predicatable, flat characters Characters are more rounded, and neither wholly good nor wholly bad
Moral to the story is obvious and often cliched Moral may be non-existent
Plot driven, that is, the emphasis is on action rather than character Character driven, that is, the emphasis is on character development rather than action
Plot is the primary focus, with characters merely players in the action Plot is merely an aid to showing character

It’s a continuum, with books defined by these two columns at opposite ends. It should be easy to see that much genre fiction fits more to the literary end of the scale than the escapist. Some of the great works of the 20th Century were speculative fiction works like The Word for World is Forest and The Handmaid’s Tale. No open-minded person reading Grace Burrowes’ Captive Hearts series would deny that it ticks most of the boxes on the right side.

And the fact that a happy ending is regarded as more escapist than an unhappy one lights all kinds of fires for me, as I’ve discussed before.

But leaving that all aside, what in any of that list makes one book less escapist than another? I just don’t buy the basic idea that a book that shows ‘realism’ (by which the critics appear to mean one that mirrors the worst of the world) is somehow less worthy than one offering an adventure or a romance.

Is literary fiction better for us?

But, we are told, we should be reading fiction that makes us think, that improves us, that deals with real life issues.

You can keep your ‘shoulds’, but even if I admitted the point (which I don’t), the great writers of genre fiction show us that escape doesn’t mean denying or avoiding real life issues. Rather, it means packaging them in a way that helps readers to understand them. In fiction, we walk a mile in another person’s shoes, see the world through their eyes, feel what they feel, and come back into our own lives changed by the experience.

Fiction at its best provides both an escape and a way to understand, and perhaps improve, our reality.

Of all the genres, romance attracts the most censure. I’ve written about why I think this might be, and I think it a shame. Jane Austen’s books are widely recognised as literary (though not in her day), yet her modern successors, who also write about human character as developed in the crucible of a developing intimate relationship, are derided.

I don’t write escapist fiction, but I do write refreshment fiction

Looking down the list above, I’d say my books ignore the two extremes, which is not surprising. I’ve been a fence-sitter all my life. My stories are designed to both entertain and make people think. They generally have complicated plots and happy endings (though not necessarily happy for everyone). The plot is full of action, but exists to show the characters of my protagonists, and the development of those characters is the key point of the story. The characters are neither wholly good nor wholly bad, and my stories do have a moral.

So not escapist according to the definition above, nor entirely literary. But it is what I do and what I will continue to do. And it is my devout hope that readers will escape into my worlds, take a holiday from their real life, and returned refreshed and maybe armed with some strategies and understandings that will serve them well in the future.

by

Sunday retrospective

time-machineToday’s Sunday retrospective reaches back to the second half of October 2014, when I was writing the last third of Farewell to Kindness. I was reporting progress—and hiccups—as I went. I finished the month with a photo of the printed first draft of Farewell to Kindness and the heading #amediting. A couple of days before that, I posted a list called ‘Editing the book’ — everything I needed to do between finishing the first draft and sending the book for beta reading.

Criminal injustice was the post I wrote when I found out about the sea change in the British criminal justice system, and how this affected my plot. In 1807,  the old system was no longer working and the new system had not been invented.

Our modern view is that one law should apply to all. It doesn’t always work. Money buys better lawyers, for a start. But the basic principle is that we have laws that lay down the crime and the range of punishments, and judges who look at the circumstances and apply penalties without fear or favour.

The pre-19th century situation in England was far, far different.

I also posted on why I changed the name of my heroine in Farewell to Kindness in a blog post with the longest titleI have ever written: Ewww, just ewww: or the cautionary tale of the perils of naming characters in a whole lot of books at once and then starting one without reference to the real world.

I waxed philosophical about romance writing as a genre in a couple of posts that largely picked up what other people were saying:

  • Fear of vulnerability reports on research that suggests fear of vulnerability underpins the common dismissal of the romance genre by readers of other types of fiction
  • Romance novels are feminist novels has excerpts from a much longer article that directly confronts the view that all romance novels are trivial, and turns it on its head.

The first review I published on my website was for the wonderful Lady Beauchamp’s Proposal. Four months later, I was thrilled to find author Amy Rose Bennett as another potential Bluestocking Belle, and we’ve been colleagues and allies ever since.

And I also published a review of Darling Beast by Elizabeth Hoyt. In less than a fortnight, I’m hosting a Belles’ Book Club discussing another of the Maiden Lane series, Scandalous Desires. Elizabeth has agreed to pop in for an hour, so don’t miss it. You can join the event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/929180810491602/

by

An fan-tastic habit

fan3I’m fascinated by the idea of a secret language of fans. I can’t quite see how it would work. Don’t get me wrong; I’m quite prepared to believe that fans were used to flirt with, and that certain gestures meant certain things. I just don’t see how coded signals could be both effective and secret. After all, if everyone knew that a half-opened fan pressed to the lips meant ‘I want your kiss’, no lady would dare press the handle of her fan to her lips in the middle of a crowded ballroom. (And if she and her swain were unobserved, then fan signals were surely unnecessary.)

For what it is worth, though, here are signals that every chaperon worth her salt should have been looking for, according to a pamphlet published in 1827 by fan-maker Jean-Pierre Duvelleroy:

  • Twirling the fan in the left hand means “we are watched.”
  • Carrying the fan in the right hand in front of her face means “follow me.”
  • Covering the left ear with the open fan means “do not betray our secret.”
  • Drawing the fan through the hand means “I hate you.”
  • Drawing the fan across the cheek means “I love you.”
  • Touching the tip of the fan with the finger means “I wish to speak to you.”
  • Letting the fan rest on the right cheek means “yes.”
  • (c) Bruce Castle Museum (Haringey Culture, Libraries and Learning); Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

    (c) Bruce Castle Museum (Haringey Culture, Libraries and Learning); Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

    Letting the fan rest on the left cheek means “no.”

  • Opening and shutting the fan means “you are cruel.”
  • Dropping the fan means “we will be friends.”
  • Fanning slowly means “I am married.”
  • Fanning rapidly means “I am engaged.”
  • Touching the handle of the fan to the lips means “kiss me.”

Whether they used them to signal to others or not, ladies—and gentlemen, too, in the regency—found the surface of fans a useful place to write memory joggers: dance steps, song lyrics, rules for card games.

Fans could be made of all sorts of things. Some were of feathers. Some were of flat sticks of bone, ivory,  wood, tortoiseshell, or mother of pearl, joined at one end, and strung on ribbon or cord so that the other end flared into the fan shape. Others had ribs of such material and a pleated skin of paper, lace, silk, or fine leather. (Here’s a quiz question. What were chicken-skin fans made from?) They were often exquisitely painted. Whether our regency heroes and heroines signaled with them or not, they would not wish to enter a stuffy crowded ballroom without one.

3-regency-fans3Just for fun, here’s an encounter between the Duke of Roxton and his loathsome cousin, The Comte de Salvan, from Lucinda Brant’s wonderful Noble Satyr.

“You will not find what you are looking for,” drawled the Duke of Roxton, quizzing glass fixed on Madame de La Tournelle. “That which you desire is not here.”

Salvan spun about and stared up at the impassive aquiline profile.

“Continue to gawp and I will go elsewhere,” murmured the Duke. “Mademoiselle Claude has been beckoning with her fan this past half hour. Sitting next to that frost-piece is preferable to being scrutinized by you, dearest cousin.”

Salvan snapped open a fan of painted chicken skin and fluttered it like a woman, searching gaze returning to the sea of silk and lace.

“To be abandoned for that hag would be an insult I could not endure, mon cousin. You merely startled me.”

“I repeat, your search is fruitless.”

“Ah! You see me scanning faces. I always do so. It is nothing,” Salvan said lightly. “Did you think me looking for someone in particular? No! Who—Who did you think I was looking for?”

(Answer: not chicken-skin.)

by

The top ten reasons I read (and write) write historical romance

I read to learn

  1. textile-mill-cotton-1834-granger“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” (George Santayana)
    Through the lens of history, we can more clearly see our own times. The Regency and Georgian eras fascinate me. There was a growing disparity between rich and poor, privatisation of public good properties, wars and rumours of wars, rapid technological changes with unpredictable outcomes. Sound familiar?
    Although I write to entertain, I also write to inform, and in doing so to hold up a mirror to our own times.
  2. “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” (L.P. Hartley)
    The similarities are challenging; the differences are fascinating.
    I continually trip over things in my reading and my research for writing that astound, horrify, or delight me. Did you know that between a quarter and a half of all women in the early 19th century had ‘Mary’ as one of their first names? That an estimated one in five women in London made income from the sex trade? That the man who invented one of the world’s earliest self-propelled wheelchairs did so after demonstrating another invention: the world’s first roller skates?
    I love to read about history, and now I’m not wasting time, I’m doing research.
  3. “I like reading novels because it provides insight into human behaviour.” (Claire Danes)
    We learn about people by meeting them; by watching them. In historical novels, the people we meet face different challenges to our own, have been moulded by a different culture, must react to a different context.
    But they are still people. I want to read about people who are real to me while I’m in the book, and stay with me when I close it.
    I know I’ve captured a character when my readers discuss their motives and their beliefs. It’s enormously thrilling when someone explains to me why one of my characters thought, felt, or did something, and I have an ‘Aha’ moment because the thought is new to me but they’re right.

I read to be entertained

  1. lovecouplegfairy003b“These boys in books are better.” (Carrie Hope Fletcher)
    Knights, Dukes, Earls, handsome rogues and pirates; what’s not to like? Let’s face it; gorgeous men in cravats and knit pantaloons are hot. And hot men who are considerate and respectful are even hotter.
    Fletcher’s song points out that real life men can’t live up to the standard set in Twilight, Deadly Instruments, and the like. And any girl who stays single till she finds someone as good as her book boyfriend is in for a long wait.
  2. “I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most.” (Margaret Atwood)
    Reading taught me that the kind are rewarded, that perseverance will win in the end, that love is worth striving for. That you can start a fire with spectacles and that sharks can’t swim backwards. That lying on a frozen over pond spreads your weight so you are less likely to break through.
    Ideas; concepts; principles; facts. I’ve learned all of those from reading. I read for pleasure. And I write books that I hope others will read for pleasure; books with strong determined heroines, loving heroes, compelling story lines, and convincing challenges.

I read to escape, to take a micro-holiday

  1. discountticket“I have never known any distress that an hour’s reading did not relieve.” (Charles de Montesquieu)
    I lived more than 50 years with an undiagnosed condition that gave me chronic tiredness and constant pain. In that time, I raised four children, two with serious health conditions, and fostered two others. We entered adolescent hell with one of them and didn’t emerge for ten years. Reading allowed me the break I needed.
    When people say that historical romance (or science fiction, or fantasy, or mystery novels) are escapism, I agree. Any book that captures your imagination allows you to escape whatever distress you may be in. The best books strengthen and inform you, sending you back into reality better able to deal with your challenges. But even the most flagrant chewing gum for the mind gives you time to recharge.
  2. “You can travel the world and never leave your chair when you read a book.” (Sherry K. Plummer)
    And not just the world! I want to go somewhen else for my book holiday. Travel, so we are told, broadens the mind. In historical romances, I am able to travel to another time. In the hands of a good writer, I experience the sights, the sounds, the smells, and the stories, and all without the risk of plague, pressganging, or death by tooth infection.
  3. “Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere.” (Elizabeth Hardwick)
    I dream of a life of leisure, with nothing to do but flirt with rakes and dance at balls. I’d undoubtedly hate it in practice. I like being busy and useful. But I can have that in a book, and then walk away, back to my real life.
  4. “There’s no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.” (Frank Herbert)
    I like happy endings. Some other writers like tragic endings, or even no ending at all. In my view, happy endings are better. Every writer has to choose where to start and where to stop the story, so why not choose the bit that feels good?
    The romance novel’s ‘happily ever after’ is not about perfect resolution of all problems; it’s about convincing the reader that the protagonists will support each other through whatever problems arise.

I read to learn to write better

  1. how_to_read_a_pile_of_books“I believe that writing is derivative. I think good writing comes from good reading.” (Charles Kuralt)
    Reading good books gives us the sound of good language. It teaches us how plots work, how to show character rather than telling it, how to make choices that show the theme of the book, how to use words to create atmosphere, how to write dialogue that sizzles.I believe I need to do two things to be a good writer. Read a lot. Write a lot. That’s all.

(Originally written for Nicole Zoltack’s blog)

by

Writing realistic rakes in romantic fiction

This post was first published on Quenby Olsen Eisenacher’s blog as part of my blog tour for A Baron for Becky.

Casinova

In modern historical romantic fiction, the hero is often a rake who sees the error of his ways when he falls in love with the heroine, and—after undergoing various trials—becomes a faithful husband and devoted family man.

Most of those rakes, I suggest, are not rakes at all. They’re what we today would call womanisers or players, but they’re not rakes in the sense that the term was used in Georgian and Regency England. Our rake heroes sleep with multiple lovers (either sequentially or concurrently) or keep a series of mistresses, or both. But back then, the term signified a much more disreputable character. It needed to. Otherwise, most of the male half of Polite Society would have been defined as rakes. And a fair percentage of the female half.

We are talking of a time when one in five women in London earned their living from the sex trade, guide books to the charms, locations, and prices of various sex workers were best-selling publications, men vied for the attention of the reigning courtesans of the day and of leading actresses, and both men and women chose their spouses for pedigree and social advantage then sought love elsewhere.

In those days, a rakehell was defined as a person who was lewd, debauched, and womanising. Rakes gambled, partied and drank hard, and they pursued their pleasures with cold calculation. To earn the name of rake or rakehell meant doing something outrageous—seducing innocence, conducting orgies in public, waving a public flag of corrupt behaviour under the noses of the keepers of moral outrage. For example, two of those who defined the term simulated sex with one another while preaching naked to the crowd from an alehouse balcony.

Drunkenness certainly didn’t make a man a rake—the consumption of alcohol recorded in diaries of the time is staggering. Fornication and adultery weren’t enough either, at least when conducted with a modicum of discretion (which meant in private or, if in public, then with other people who were doing the same thing).

Lord Byron earned the name with many sexual escapades, including—so rumour had it—an affair with his sister. His drinking and gambling didn’t help, either. But none of these would have been particularly notable if they had not been carried out in public.

The Italian adventurer Giacomo Casanova mixed in the highest circles, and did not become notorious until he wrote the story of his life.

On the other hand, William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire, lived with his wife and his mistress, who was his wife’s best friend. The three did not share the details of their relationship with the wider world, so there was gossip, but not condemnation. Devonshire is also rumoured to have been one of Lady Jersey’s lovers (the mother of the Lady Jersey of Almack fame).

I planned for my Marquis of Aldridge to be a real rake: a person whose behaviour, despite his social status as the heir to a duke, causes mothers to warn their daughters about him. On the other hand, I didn’t want him to be a totally unsympathetic character. After all, not only is he the only hero on the scene for the first half of the book; he’s also going to be the hero of his own book after he has been through a few more trials and tribulations.

He has had mixed reviews since A Baron for Becky was published. Most reviewers like the rogue, and are asking for his story, while still acknowledging that he is a libertine. One or two dislike him heartily, and one said:

Note to author: your main characters were very interesting but you hinted at some type of redemption for one particular character that I just cannot fathom. I challenge you to make me like him better because I disliked him throughout the story.

Now there’s a challenge I can’t refuse!