Romance novel genre

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Writing process blog tour

dangerousworksToday, I’m having my moment with the torch of the Romance Writers’ Blog Hop. It has been passed from writer to writer for some time. Not only do you get to know a little about me and my writing process, but I get to introduce you to fellow romance authors so you can learn about their individual writing styles and processes.

I was nominated by my friend Caroline Warfield, writer of Dangerous Works and the forthcoming Dangerous Secrets (release date 18 March). With a 4.9 star average rating on Amazon, Dangerous Works tells the story of a scholar who dares scandal to learn what she needs to know to illuminate her study of Greek poetry, and the man she trusts to teach her.

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My writing process

Now to answer the questions about my writing process.

What do I write?

AzedCompWords5Tempting though it is to give Hamlet’s answer (“Words. Words. Words.”), I’ll behave. So what do I write. The short answer is ‘historical romance’, but this is my blog, so I’m allowed to give the long answer.

The novel and novella I’ve written, the two I’m working on, and the ones I plan to write in the next few years are set in the early 19th century. I do a lot of research to get the details accurate, and I include snippets about world and local events as part of the background to the action.

So ‘historical’ works.

Every plot so far tells the story of two people being attracted to one another and falling in love, and finishes with the two main protagonists starting a ‘happy ever after’ that I try to make believable.

So ‘romance’ works too.

And the first three novels also include elements of mystery and thriller. So I’d be quite comfortable with those designations, too. (The novella, though, is a straight sweet historical romance.) If people like the protagonists of my 2nd novel, I may go on to write about more of the cases they investigate together, and those will be historical mysteries rather than romances.

Bath houseI have some book ideas for other historical periods: for example, the elves that whisper stories to me want me to write a murder mystery set in Edwardian times in Rotorua. But, at the moment, I’m sticking with the early 19th century.

I’ve also started (and abandoned) a number of sf books that I may go back to eventually. And the short stories I had some success with in the dim dark ages of my youth qualified as literary, being otherwise unclassifiable and universally gloomy.

What am I currently working on?

BookcoverCCC2I’m continuing to market my first published fiction in 30 years, my novella Candle’s Christmas Chair. Candle is available free from all major ebook outlets and is doing well — more than 25,500 copies downloaded in its first 5 weeks and over 100 reviews in various places, with an average rating of over 4 stars.

I’ve just sent my debut novel, Farewell to Kindness, to the proofreader. It will be on prerelease early in March and published on 1 April. In Farewell to Kindness, an earl on a mission of revenge is attracted to a widow who lives rent-free in one of his cottages, and whose daughter is the image of his predecessor, his deceased cousin. Rede, the hero, doesn’t want to be distracted from his quest to destroy the villains who killed his family. Anne, the heroine, wants to stay in hiding to avoid the villains after her and her family. Love is both unexpected and inconvenient. Farewell to Kindness is the first in the series The Golden Redepennings.

BookcoverEPI’m writing the first draft of Encouraging Prudence, starring the thief taker (bounty hunter) who helped Rede in Farewell to Kindness, and the spy he loves. Sent to investigate a blackmail scheme, the two uncover blackmailers, murderers, traitors, difficult relatives, and one another’s vulnerabilities.

I’m also researching for A Raging Madness, the second in The Golden Redepennings. Alex, Rede’s cousin, is coming home through Cheshire when he meets a woman he can’t stand and can’t forget. Ella thought Alex was the last person on earth she would turn to for help. She knows what he thinks about her. But when her evil in-laws seek to have her committed to an asylum, she is forced to seek his protection. I need to find out more about the canals through Cheshire.

And I’m beginning to plot a novella — another Farewell to Kindness prequel — for a boxed set I’m putting together for Christmas 2015 with a group of friends. Tentatively called Gingerbread Bride, it tells the story of a woman with a reputation for running away.

“Not away,” Mary said, definitely. “To. I run to. There’s a difference.”

“Away. To. It doesn’t matter. You’re a lady now; not a little girl. Surely you must see that you have to go home?” Richard didn’t expect Miss Waterford to listen, though. When had she ever?

“You can’t stop me, Lieutenant Redepenning. You can’t stop me, and you can’t catch me.” She flung her last words behind her as she heeled her horse into a flying gallop, striking his with her whip as she passed. “No-one can!”

Richard, shouldered to one side by the horse, sat where he’d landed, watching the two horses and the Admiral’s daughter receding into the distance. Annoying, arrogant, impudent, self-willed little bitch. What a woman!

How do my historical romances differ from others in the genre?

google-romance-novelBooks in the general category ‘historical romance’ cover a huge range of different eras, plot tropes, character types, tonal styles, and subcategories. And self-publishing has opened the door for writers to produce work that broadens the range still further.

I write strong determined heroines that, in ways that can be defended as historically feasible, refuse to accept the constraints society would place on them. I write heroes that can appreciate and respect my heroines. And I write villains that you’ll love to hate.

I also create complicated plots with a large cast of characters, and I enjoy using settings that don’t comply with the ballroom/house party scenes that are often found in historical romances.

My first two books take place in the same part of England, west of the Cotswolds. But Encouraging Prudence ranges more widely and finishes in another country altogether (Sweden, I think, but I’m not there yet).

I don’t stick to the world of the Beau Monde. Dukes, Earls, and Barons are fun and fascinating — the rock stars of their era. But the hero of my first book had a career as a fur trapper before he inherited an Earldom, and the heroes of the next two books are both commoners.

Why do I write historical?

enclosureI love reading historical romances, and I love doing research. I’ve been passionate about history since I was a little girl. One of my career aspirations during my teenage years was archaeologist. I fell in love with the late Georgian era when I began to read regency historicals that included information about canal building, balloons, the first gas lights, and all the other incredible innovations of the explosion of invention that changed society between the 1750s and the 1850s.

I see many parallels with today. To take just one example, my period includes the enclosure movement (it was started in England before it moved to Scotland). Intended to make farming more efficient, it resulted in wealthy landowners cut farm labourers off from keeping livestock and collecting foodstuffs from the commons. People who thought they had a historic right to use the common land to feed their families were suddenly cast into dire poverty. Today, companies are laying claim to intellectual property rights over plant and animal bloodlines, even human dna. And they’re taking ordinary people to court to prevent them from using what was once free to all.

Writing historical romances helps me to work through some of this stuff. The trick is to make it an essential plot point or part of the background, and not a lecture.

How does my writing process work?

Or, at least, will bie editing after work.

Coloured pens make everything better. Note the map of the village of Longford at top centre.

I’m still working this one out. I thought I was a planner, and I carefully planned each chapter of my first novel and my first novella. Then I went off in a different direction with each, following the characters on their own journey. This meant a lot of rewriting, going back to seed later ideas into earlier chapters.

With the current novel, I know where each quarter of the book takes place; I have a fair idea of the main plot pivot points; I know more or less what the main conflict is. But I’m only plotting in detail a chapter or two ahead. It’s going well, but I expect I’ll need to do a lot of rewriting, going back to seed later ideas into earlier chapters.

Two things that are working well for me are setting a daily word count and creating detailed character sketches of my key characters.

I started with no daily word count. I wrote when the inspiration elves consented to whisper to me. Then I set a count of 500 words a day and all of a sudden those elves started visiting me more often. Now, I’m writing a minimum of 1300 words a day, six days a week. And I need to keep that up if I’m to meet my writing schedule. According to my beta readers, the chapters I wrote more quickly are better than the ones that took me ages. Go figure.

I have an one page questionnaire for each minor character and an eight page questionnaire for my main protagonists. By the time I’ve worked my way through all the questions, I know them well, and once I know them well I know what they’ll do in any particular situation. I do the minor characters as I need them, but I do the protagonists before I start my first draft. I originally kept the character sketches in the OneNote database for the novel or novella I was working on, but my books cross in so many different ways that I’ve now created a new database in OneNote just for characters.

I also keep Pinterest boards for visual inspiration, and I draw maps and house plans so that, when my characters are moving around, I can visualise what they’re up to and work out what route they need to take and how long they’ll spend getting there.

Up next,  Jessie Clever

In the second grade, Jessie began a story about a duck and a lost ring.  Two harrowing pages of wide ruled notebook paper later, the ring was found.  And Jessie has been writing ever since.

Armed with the firm belief that women in the Regency era could be truly awesome heroines, Jessie began telling their stories in her Spy Series, a thrilling ride in historical espionage that showcases human faults and triumphs and most importantly, love.

Jessie makes her home in the great state of New Hampshire where she lives with her husband and two very opinionated Basset Hounds.  For more, visit her website at jessieclever.com.

Jessie just wrapped her Regency romance Spy Series, but as creativity often plagues those blessed with it, Jessie discovered a whole new story erupting from what she thought was the end.  So she is hard at work on the follow-up series she likes to refer to as the Spy Series: The Next Generation.

But before the next series debuts, be sure to check out the heroes and heroines of the Spy Series, starting with Inevitably a Duchess: A Spy Series Novella.

Inevitably a Duchess Jessie Clever Spy Series Novella 102214Blurb:

Richard Black, the Duke of Lofton, waited for her, watching as the agony of marriage broke the woman he loved.  Lady Jane Haven had to find a reason to survive, a purpose to carry on when it seemed God would not just let her die.  But when fate finally offers them a chance to be together, a treasonous plot threatens to keep them apart.  And when it becomes more than just a matter of survival, Jane must find the strength to be his duchess.

Meet Jessie on social media:

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80 years of Regency romance – a tribute to Georgette Heyer

A gorgeous log designed for the Beau Monde by Mari Christie, who writes Regency novels as Mariane Gabriele

A gorgeous logo designed for the Beau Monde by Mari Christie, who writes Regency novels as Mariane Gabriele

The Beau Monde, the historical fiction chapter of Romance Writers of America, is celebrating and important anniversary this year.

Eighty years ago, in 1935, the very first Regency romance novel went to press. That novel, Regency Buck, was written by Georgette Heyer.

Like many historical romance authors, I was introduced to Regency romance by Georgette Heyer. I own every one of her books (including her mysteries and other historicals – she wrote over 50 books) and I’ve reread them many times. They’re my comfort food when I’m unwell in mind and body. I love her strong-minded females, witty dialogue, and hilarious plot situations.

She conducted meticulous research, though she also had fun inventing slang language and – when the imitators began to copy her – she apparently got a few details wrong on purpose, just to see others follow in her footsteps. Her publisher says:

Georgette Heyer is one of AbeBooks’ top 10 bestselling authors, over the entire history of this company.

Last time we looked, Heyer was behind Shakespeare, C.S. Lewis, Agatha Christie and Stephen King but ahead of J.K. Rowling, Charles Dickens and James Patterson.

The Georgette Heyer fan site says that two of her books have been made into movies (one as a spoof and one in German, but hey). Which leaves plenty of scope for future movie makers.

If it happens, you’ll hear about it first on the Georgette Heyer Facebook page.

Georgette Heyer in 1970

Georgette Heyer in 1970

Here’s a summary of her biography – the start of an extensive Wikipedia article:

Georgette Heyer (16 August 1902 – 4 July 1974) was an English historical romance and detective fiction novelist. Her writing career began in 1921, when she turned a story for her younger brother into the novel The Black Moth. In 1925 Heyer married George Ronald Rougier, a mining engineer. The couple spent several years living in Tanganyika and Macedonia before returning to England in 1929. After her novel These Old Shades became popular despite its release during the General Strike, Heyer determined that publicity was not necessary for good sales. For the rest of her life, she refused to grant interviews, telling a friend: “My private life concerns no one but myself and my family.”[2]

Heyer essentially established the historical romance genre and its subgenre Regency romance. Her Regencies were inspired by Jane Austen, but unlike Austen, who wrote about and for the times in which she lived, Heyer was forced to include copious information about the period so that her readers would understand the setting. To ensure accuracy, Heyer collected reference works and kept detailed notes on all aspects of Regency life. While some critics thought the novels were too detailed, others considered the level of detail to be Heyer’s greatest asset. Her meticulous nature was also evident in her historical novels; Heyer even recreated William the Conqueror’s crossing into England for her novel The Conqueror.

Beginning in 1932, Heyer released one romance novel and one thriller each year. Her husband often provided basic outlines for the plots of her thrillers, leaving Heyer to develop character relationships and dialogue so as to bring the story to life. Although many critics describe Heyer’s detective novels as unoriginal, others such as Nancy Wingate praise them “for their wit and comedy as well as for their well-woven plots”.[3]

Her success was sometimes clouded by problems with tax inspectors and alleged plagiarists. Heyer chose not to file lawsuits against the suspected literary thieves, but tried multiple ways of minimizing her tax liability. Forced to put aside the works she called her “magnum opus” (a trilogy covering the House of Lancaster) to write more commercially successful works, Heyer eventually created a limited liability company to administer the rights to her novels. She was accused several times of providing an overly large salary for herself, and in 1966 she sold the company and the rights to seventeen of her novels to Booker-McConnell. Heyer continued writing until her death in July 1974. At that time, 48 of her novels were still in print; her last book, My Lord John, was published posthumously.

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Happy ever after – in praise of marriage

After writing about women who never marry, I’m now turning to the topic of people who are still happily married many years after the wedding.

Some people object to romances and their HEA endings because they imply that women can only be happy and complete if they are married (or in some other form of long-term committed romantic relationship). As I’ve said in discussions on the last happy ever after post, I think this is a serious objection and one worth listening to. While the nature of a romance novel requires the main protagonists to end up together, I can see no reason why important secondary characters couldn’t be thoroughly happy in single blessedness.

On the other hand, some people object to the HEA endings because they’re unrealistic. Such people point to the divorce rate, and to historic records of unhappy marriages.

So let’s examine those assumptions. In the West, we currently have a divorce rate of around 30% to 35%. So couples have around two chances in three of being together until one of them dies. We can assume that some unhappy couples will never divorce, but – given the ease of divorce in the West – I’d suggest we’d be erring on the generous side if we said that accounted for another 15% to 20% of couples. Even if we take that unlikely percentage, though, that still means 50% of marriages are happy; 50% of married couples get their happy ever after. I’d buy a raffle ticket with those odds.

Ah, you might say, but historically a lot of marriages were arranged. And arranged marriages are less likely to be happy. Not so, apparently. Happiness seems to be more about the attitude of the couple than the degree of choice over partner.

I’ll admit to a bias. I’ve been married for 43 years, and I love my personal romantic hero more each day. My sister and my brothers, and my husband’s sister and brother are all still with the first person they married. Two of my three married daughters are still married to their first-choice partner, and the third has recently remarried.

My PRH and I once coached engaged couples. One of things we learnt in our training is that couples that stay together often report that they started marriage with an image in their minds of what their old age together would be like. Forty-five years ago, almost to the day, my PRH and I went carol singing around the pensioner flats in the town where we lived. One elderly couple invited us in to sing to them, and we were much struck by how tender they were with one another. As we left, I said to PRH and he to me: that’s what I want – that kind of love when we are old.

I still love to see happy couples celebrating their love for one another in their old age. I still want that for my PRH and me. And I want to write books where the reader believes the protagonists have that kind of future, and where they have older couples they can admire whose marriages are still strong and passionate after decades of loving. I’m taking my theme from the first three lines of Robert Browning’s poem:

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
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Judging a book by its cover

BookcoverCCCIn less than a month, I’ll have a cover out there in reader land. And I’ve been reading a lot about what works and what doesn’t.

If you google using the search term ‘creating professional book covers,’ you’ll find heaps of superb advice. I particularly liked Sherry Thomas’s article about the process Courtney Milan took her and other authors through when they were creating Midnight Scandals.

It’s fascinating to read, and raised issues I’ve never thought of. How would my covers look in greyscale? How about in tiny, tiny format on a Goodreads ‘What I’ve been reading’ post?

If you’re creating a cover, read the post. And here’s an article from Courtney Milan about typography on book covers. And here are 300 fonts that work for book covers, divided by genre.

Meanwhile, I have five book covers on my books page. I’ve asked for permission to use the photo on three of them, and I intend to do a photo shoot to get the right photo for the two Redepenning books, but I think the typography is moving in the right direction. What do you think?

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The happy endings myth

happy endingOne of the criticisms I’ve heard of romance novels is that they have happy endings, and ‘happy endings are not realistic’.

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

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

In the continuing story that was the life of my fictional character Stephen Redepenning, I could have chosen a different place to start and to stop. I could, perhaps, have started with the intrepid young adventurer boarding a ship for Canada. I could have followed with the adventure of his life as he found a place in the wilderness, entered into a trade agreement with locals that he sealed by marrying one of their daughters, and built his own small fur trapping empire. I could have ended as he stood in the smoking ruins of his log cabin, looking at the graves of his wife and children and swearing vengeance on their murderers.

It might have been a good story. But it isn’t the part of his life that I chose to tell.

I like stories that end on an upward trajectory, not a downward trajectory. If I like the protagonists, I want them to have hope. I want to feel that they have a chance for a happy future. To me, the end of the story is more about the writer giving me food for what happens next. In my imagination, the story continues.

(And, if I don’t like the protagonists, I have no objection to someone else in the story having the happy ending. Hamlet’s tragedy turned out rather well for Fortinbras.)

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. Romeo and Juliet was always going to be a tragedy, not because the lovers died, but because of the type of character that Romeo was. If they’d lived, he would have been on to the next hot chick within a month or two.

But Bassanio and Portia, in the Merchant of Venice, face trials together and win through, and we’re confident that they’ll be able to continue to do so.

I met my PRH at a prayer meeting nearly 46 years ago. Our lives together have hit rough patches here and there, with internal and external trials. But facing them as a couple has made us stronger. Whatever happens in the years left to us, we’ll cope. Now that’s a happy ending.

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Some like it hot

5696450I’ve been mulling over heat-level descriptions in romance novels. According to a discussion I’ve been in on Goodreads, readers hate finding themselves in a novel that gives them more or less sex than they expected. (Both seem to rub people up the wrong way.)

My hero and heroine in Farewell to Kindness have (I hope, or I’ve done it wrong) quite a bit of heat between them. They kiss several times, they have one memorable night, they think about one another a lot, and Rede’s thoughts are definitely carnal (what can I say; he’s a 34-year-old male who has been celibate since his wife died 3 years ago).

And my villainess is either having sex or thinking about it in most, if not all, of her scenes.

So the heat-rating ‘sweet sensuality’ doesn’t fit. And I’ve gone beyond ‘mild’ in a couple of places, too.

On the other hand, the heat-rating ‘hot sensuality’ seems over the top. The passionate encounters take up a tiny fragment of the whole, and I tend to use non-specific language and focus on emotions rather than physical descriptions (with a few notable exceptions).

As I’ve noted elsewhere, even this level of heat was enough to make me change my heroine’s name.

The villainess Lydia’s scenes are left largely to the imagination of the reader. Here’s the start of the scene where I introduce her:

The boy was enthusiastic, but unskilled and undisciplined. He grunted and heaved over Lydia, striving for his own completion without regard to hers. He would improve with a little tutoring, however. Yes, she would certainly teach him how to give pleasure. While that was by no means her reason for taking him as her lover, she saw no reason to deny herself the benefits of his teenage vigour.

A movement caught her eye. The boy was too far gone to notice Baron Carrington, lounging at his ease in the doorway.

She raised one eyebrow. She hated, feared, and loved her husband in equal measure, and knew better than to show any of those emotions.

He smiled coldly, then gestured with his head. She had no difficulty interpreting the command. “Come and see me when you have finished.” He didn’t wait to see her acknowledgement, fading from the doorway as silently as he had appeared.

The boy stiffened all over, letting out a shout as he reached his climax. She let out her own cry. Letting him think he’d pleased her would help to bind him to her. Bindings. There was a thought worth exploring. If she bound him to the bed, she could force him to slow down.

Later. For now, the Baron waited. And the Baron did not like to wait.

Not hot. Right? But certainly not sweet. Okay, she’s the villainess, so here’s a bit starring Rede and Anne. They’ve spent the night in a cottage, sharing the one bed, but she was asleep before he got into it:

Anne woke in the pre-dawn light, aware of a warm large presence enfolding her in the bed. Rede was wrapped around her, his front spooned against her back, one large arm flung over her body, and one leg over her hips.

She lay still, cataloguing each of the touch points. Rede’s hand brushed her breast. His leg hooked back to rest against the front of her thighs. Against her buttocks, something hard pressed. Was that what she thought? If so, it seemed bigger than she expected.

She resisted the urge to squirm against it. Instead, she lifted Rede’s arm, and carefully pushed it behind her. As it fell back against his side, he rolled onto his back, freeing her from the cage of his body.

She lay still for a few moments more, waiting to see if he woke, but his breathing didn’t change.

After a while, she wriggled a bit further away, so that she could sit up without disturbing him. He lay beside her, flat on his back, still sleeping. He had rolled from under the covers, which were all bunched up on her side of the bed.

She was a little disappointed to see that he’d come to bed in shirt and pantaloons. But his shirt was unbuttoned, and she could see a vee of his chest, with a dusting of golden hair. And she could see his feet. She had never before thought of feet as beautiful, but his were. Narrow and straight, with long elegant toes to go with the long elegant fingers that had cared for her so tenderly last night.

“My darling,” he had said. How she wished she really was.

She continued her examination. The strong curves of his chest, the flat planes of his abdomen. And, yes, there. Where the pantaloons were tented over… she had no idea what to call it. The male part of him.

Without thinking, she reached out a hand, stopping a few inches in the air above the stretched fabric.

“You can touch it if you wish,” Rede said.

She snatched her hand back and looked at him, feeling the heat as she blushed.

He hadn’t moved, except to open those blue, blue eyes.

So I’m calling the novel warm, following Tori Macallister, who did a lovely post on the various rating systems people use.

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Is that a rooster in your pocket… ?

A row of roosters and their hens at the local agricultural show. I think the one on the right is my Mr Peep.

A row of roosters and their hens at the local agricultural show. I think the one on the right is my Mr Peep.

I’ve been researching the c–k term since I mentioned on Facebook that I’d included a joke around it in Farewell to Kindness. (Anne’s sister has a pet rooster which the heroine brings with her to stay at the hero’s house, allowing the heroine’s cousin to make jokes about the hero needing a prize-winning c–k).

One of the commenters said that the term in England was cockerel, and that the term c–k wouldn’t be used.

The same conversation came up on a Goodread’s thread, where another novelist asked about acceptable and time-appropriate terms.

It turns out that the one I wanted to use  was in common use for both male birds and male members, and was not considered unfit for polite company (even when referring to male domestic fowl) until Victorian times, about 25 years after the setting for my book.

And a cockerel was, until Victorian times, a young male chicken – under 12 months old. The Victorian English applied the junior bird term to all male chickens of any age, while the Puritan Americans reacted to the double entendre a 150 years earlier, and adopted the term rooster.

So I can keep my joke and remain historically accurate, though Alex’s pun would have had him banned from the dinner table if the more innocent ladies at the table had understood his double meaning.

Other writers have clearly faced the same challenge, and some clever person has responded with a timeline diagram for male anatomy terms, taken from Green’s Dictionary of Slang, by Jonathon Green.

I could go for man Thomas, though there are a number of other possibilities. Calling it a battering piece might break the mood of my love scene, don’t you think? And shaft of delight, while authentic, is rather too congratulatory. Tickle tail is funny, and gay instrument might be misunderstood by today’s readers.

Here, by the way, is the equivalent timeline diagram for female anatomy terms.