December 10, 2014 by judeknight

Christmas Party Blog Hop

On 20th December (or 21st if you’re my side of the date line) I’m joining 24 other authors to invite you to join us and our characters on a Christmas party in the blogosphere.

More news, and the list of places to party, will follow, but I just wanted to ask you whether you’d rather:

visit with Candle Avery, his mother, and his nabob uncle for Christmas 1804. Candle’s love story, which I’ve been publishing as a serial while I wrote it, will be launched during the party, and will be free to download. It is set in the months leading up to Christmas 1805, so the possible blog post would be a prequel.
have a description of the kind of games played at Christmas house parties in the late Georgian era.

(Or both. I have trouble with making choices, so often choose both.)

Thank you to the lovely Helen Hollick, author of the Sea Witch Chronicles, for organising the blog hop and inviting me to join.

November 8, 2014 by judeknight

Spring in the garden is a delight

The Black Evil One and the Henchcat love when I move the hens. They reckon that I just have to slip up and leave the cover off, and they’ll eat like queens for weeks.

I have been neglecting everything else in favour of the novel. The hens were living in a moonscape; the tomatoes need to be tied up; I managed to treat the trees for curly leaf, but thinning the fruit? If the trees want their fruit thinned, they’ll just have to do it themselves.

Today, the plan is to spend the morning catching up on the ever increasing to do list.

I’ve moved the hens, but still have to change the sand in the tray of their roost and put clean straw in their nest boxes.

And then catch the flibberty things to dust them with mite powder.

I’ve tidied up around the house a bit, but the grandkids that are staying with me for the weekend are going to help me wash the windows inside and out.

Tomatoes, I will get to you, promise.

Meanwhile, the PRH is going to mow the lawn (nearly 2 acres of it), but first, he tells me, he needs to cut some fillets so he can stack the wood for my new raised garden beds. Fillets, he says, are bits of scrap wood that go between planks to hold them off one another so the air can circulate to let the timber dry. Who knew?

The title of this piece is the first line from a chapter in Farewell to Kindness. Yes, okay, that’s where my mind is.

Up to page 337 of 506 on the plot line review, and page 97 on the third draft edit. Wait for me, novel. I’m coming!

October 26, 2014 by judeknight

Fear of vulnerability

Brene Brown, a research professor and bestselling author, says that the romance genre is both loved and hated because a key theme is vulnerability. Why is this loved? Why is this hated? Rhyll of the Naughty Ninjas has written an article about Brown’s research, which in part says:

It’s that theme (constant in much of romance writing) that vulnerability is courage. When do the hero and heroine triumph by achieving true connection? When they’re able to put aside their masks and armor and allow others to see their true selves, flaws and all. When they expose their feelings. When they take a risk on love. In other words, when they allow themselves to be vulnerable. While my logical mind can’t accept this, the emotional reader part of my brain craves more.

However, it’s pretty clear that western mainstream culture disdains vulnerability and views it as weakness. Strength, control, perfection and certainty are valued and there’s very little tolerance for uncertainty, failure or risk. Being emotional or imperfect is equated with failure and weaknesses. Instead, people are encouraged (or shamed into) seeking perfection in all areas of life, from flawless looks, to perfect grades and parenting, and ever-upwardly-mobile career paths.

Very good article, and well worth reading. Thanks, Rhyll.

H/T to Amy Rose Bennett, who posted a link to the article on Facebook. Amy is the author of Lady Beauchamp’s Proposal, which I had the pleasure of reading recently.

October 24, 2014 by judeknight

7 curious things about me – and some lovely blogs

Thank you, June Hur, for tagging me in the One Lovely Blog Award blog chase. I’m to write seven lovely things about me and tag 15 further blogs that I consider lovely.

What is the One Lovely Blog Award?

So I went and looked up this thing, and found that it started as a way to encourage new blog authors. Thanks again, June. And Miss Bluestocking (subtitle ‘Inside a Writer’s Mind) is, indeed, a lovely blog. And – with not quite five weeks on the web – this is, indeed, a brand new blog.

Here are the rules.

Rules:

Share 7 Lovely Facts about myself (I’m sharing 7 curious facts – you can decide whether they’re lovely or not).
Link to 15 blogs (or as many as possible) that I enjoy reading.
Nominate the authors of those 15 blogs to participate and do the same, linking back to the original Lovely blog (that’s me, in this case).

7 curious things about me

My Dad was a Russian spy

In the early 60s, at the height of the Cold War, my father was a primary school teacher (elementary, to you US folk) in a outlying suburb of Wellington, New Zealand’s capital city. He had majored in Geography, and he hit upon the idea of visiting all the embassies and trade commissions in Wellington to ask for brochures and other resources for his class.

When Dad arrived at the Soviet Union’s Legation, he was greeted with open arms, all the resources he could possibly want, and a veiled suggestion that more valuable gifts, and even money, might be available if he was willing to share with the nice Russian gentleman anything he might know about New Zealand’s defence force or external relations.

Somewhat dazed, he went home and told my mum that he’d been invited to be a Russian spy.

I just love what happened next. Only in sleepy little New Zealand!

Continue reading →

October 22, 2014 by judeknight

Books I must have

This is my ‘to buy’ list. Not the only books I want to get before the end of December, but the ones I’ve been waiting for the writers to publish (release date on right). Must. Finish. First. Draft.

A Notorious Ruin: Sinclair Sisters	Carolyn Jewel	23 September 2014

The Governess Club: Louisa	Ellie Macdonald	7 October 2014
What a Lady needs for Christmas	Grace Burrowes	7 October 2014
The Counterfeit Heiress	Tasha Alexander	14 October 2014
Untitled rhymes with love novella	Elizabeth Boyle	15 October 2014
Darling beast	Elizabeth Hoyt	28 October 2014
The Viscount who lived down the lane	Elizabeth Boyle	28 October 2014
By Winter’s Light	Stephanie Laurens	28 October 2014
Only enchanting	Mary Balogh	28 October 2014

The shocking secret of a guest at the wedding	Victoria Alexander	4 November 2014
When sparks fly	Sabrina Jeffries	17 November 2014
Never judge a lady by her cover	Sarah MacLean	25 November 2014
An improper arrangement	Kasey Michaels	25 November 2014
Tall, dark, and royal	Vanessa Kelly	25 November 2014
Never judge a lady by her cover	Sarah MacLean	25 November 2014

Silver deceptions	Sabrina Jeffries	30 December 2014
Four nights with the Duke	Eloisa James	31 December 2014
Say yes to the Marquess	Tessa Dare	31 December 2014

October 21, 2014 by judeknight

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

Cover showing woman archer on village green

The heroine also known as Anne

Let me start by saying I didn’t do it on purpose.

It’s like this. In the past two years, I’ve created more than 50 plots, detailing more than 30 of them. For most of the plots, the hero and heroine, and a few of the key secondary characters, have names, personal histories, and characters. I’ve also researched my period extensively. And since I’m a tad obsessive, that means a database, charts, sketches, photos, tables, and spreadsheets. Lots of spreadsheets.

When it comes to forenames, I’ve got two tables showing the most popular names in late Georgian England (one for male and one for female names), a spreadsheet of allocated names and titles, a list of possible other character names… okay, maybe more than a tad.

Now I come from a large family, and my own children have made an extensive contribution to the numbers. And we tend to pick traditional names for our babies. Perhaps you can see where this is going.

I eventually twigged that my research and planning was another way to practice avoidance. So I picked the first story in time – the one that happened in 1807, and began to write.

It didn’t even occur to me that the heroine having the same name as one of my granddaughters might be an issue. They were two different people who just happened to have the same name.

The thing is, this is my first book. I hope to be published in April, and – all going well – people will actually read it.

And my granddaughter, who I adore, whose umbilicus I cut 14 years ago, who I helped raise through her early childhood; my granddaughter had the same name as the heroine.

And on Monday I finally reached the hot scene.

Up till now, they’ve been attracted, there have been a couple of close calls and some fairly steamy kisses. But now I had them stranded for the night, alone, in a cottage far from everyone they knew.

And as the hero and heroine began to explore the possibilities that this opened, I began to experience dissonance. Each time the hero said her name in a voice growing huskier and huskier with passion, my dissonance grew.

I know, right?

It was creepy. and I don’t mean Halloween creepy. I mean scruffy man on the corner in nothing but a raincoat creepy.

Ewww. Just. Ewww.

So, thanks to search and replace, my heroine is now called Anne. She always has been called Anne. She always will be called Anne. And when Rede whispers endearments to her in the intimacy of the quiet cottage, he whispers a name that doesn’t belong to any of my granddaughters.

I don’t promise that I will never have a heroine up to steamy stuff who happens to have the same name as one of my nearest and dearest. But it won’t be my first book. And the person won’t be a teenager.

Okay, Debs?

October 20, 2014 by judeknight

Secrets, passion, and a nasty villain or two

Lady Beauchamp’s Proposal, by Amy Rose Bennett, had me from the first page. The author beautifully captures Beth’s desperate courage, and when her sleazy husband enters (on the next page) the atmosphere ratchets up another notch.

Elizabeth is the neglected and ignored wife of the dissolute Lord Beauchamp. When she escaped from him before he can infect her with syphilis, she runs as far as she can, applying for a job as governess in a remote castle in Scotland. There, she meets James, the Marquess of Rothsburgh, and the attraction between them is immediate.

Both James and Beth are decent people, tormented by the events of their pasts, guilty about their growing attraction, and troubled by self-doubt. It isn’t hard to care about what happens to them. As the author turns up the heat on their sensual awareness of one another, we want them to be together despite the fact that Beth is still married.

In those days marriage really was till death. That Beth’s husband is a selfish, hedonistic rat oozing a particularly nasty infection doesn’t change his legal rights to insist on keeping his wife. Beth and James can’t see any path to a happy ending except to wait, perhaps for years, and the last chapters turn the gothic screws tighter still, with Beth facing something worse than she can imagine (no spoilers – you’ll have to read it for yourself).

I loved this book, and I found the ending very satisfying.

I have two tiny niggles.

One is the speed of the ending – ten months passes between the end of one chapter and the end of the book. It worked, but it seemed rushed to me. I’d have at least liked to see a scene played out between Beth and the two sleazes, where they make their threats to her, rather than just hear about them later when she is thinking over what they said.

The other is a continuity problem; early in the book, we’re told that Beth heard about the governess job a month before the day she arrives at the castle. The person she hears talking about the job mentions that the Marquis is a recent widower. More than a fortnight after she arrives – so close to seven weeks after someone in London mentioned the death, the Marquis tells Beth his wife has been dead for eight weeks. So how did the news arrive in London so fast?

As I say; tiny.

I still loved the book. I recommend it, and I’ll be looking forward to seeing more from Amy Rose Bennett.

October 19, 2014 by judeknight

The sum total of human happiness is one minus part of my neighbour’s sorrow

One of the reasons I love learning about the Georgian era is that I find so many parallels to our own time. It was a time of rapid change, not just because of the industrial revolution, but because of the ideas that were beginning to gain foothold: ideas about individual human rights, about economic theory and the use of capital, about class and religion. It was a time of great and growing rifts between the rich and the poor, and of sudden changes in the ways that people lived. It was, of course, a time when ideas became manifest in a raft of inventions – from gas lighting to better road surfacing to flushing indoor toilets. It was a watershed time, when the old ways lingered side by side with thinking that is recognisably modern.

Today, we teeter on the brink of another great sea change in human thinking and endeavour, and the direction we may travel is by no means clear. Perhaps, by thinking about the past, we can be clearer about the present?

Thanks to a conversation on Goodreads, I’ve been thinking about the differences between standard of living and quality of living, and whether we can fairly say that our standard of living is better than that of past eras. The problem lies with what we mean by ‘our’ and who we’re comparing ourselves to in past eras.

Are we comparing a top movie or sports star with the peasant of Medieval Germancy? Or a shanty-town dweller in Rio de Janeiro with the very rich of Georgian England? Either would be a nonsense, of course. But it is common enough to compare the average middle-class Westerner with a slum dweller from the worst cribs in St Giles, the poorest part of Georgian London.

If we want to compare apples with apples, we can. According to some economic historians, around 80% of the world’s population lived in poverty in 1820. According to OECD figures, around 80% of the world’s population lives on less than $10 a day today. So not much change then.

Continue reading →

October 16, 2014 by judeknight

Criminal injustice

I’ve been researching the justice system of the late 18th and early 19th century, It’s a fascinating period – a time of change in attitudes to crime and legal remedies for crime, as in so much else.

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.

One of the major plot lines in Farewell to Kindness is the hero’s hunt for his family’s killers. In the course of the book, I reach a point where I want to get some of the minor players out of the way, and I hit on the idea of having them caught with contraband goods, arrested, and incarcerated.

I figured they’d be ripe for a little bit of pressure to make them give up some information about the real villain.

Ooops. 21st century blinkers on.

While my characters were having some money troubles (caused by my hero working behind the scenes), they were still wealthy merchants with powerful connections. And even poor peasants, as long as they had influence behind them (such as the local squire) could often slide gently out from under the attentions of the law in the system as it was then. Wealthy merchants? No problem.

So when the Excise or Customs officers (or maybe both) and the local representatives of the law (probably retainers of the local Justice of the Peace, but possibly part-time or full-time night watchmen appointed by the local City Council – no central police force yet) turned up at the door, the conversation would have gone something like this:

“What do you lot want? I’m about to have my dinner.”

“Now look here, Mr XX. Your warehouse down on the wharf is full of stolen and smuggled goods.”

“My goodness, I wonder how that happened.”

“You knew all about it. We have evidence, and a deposition from a real Earl. And we have to listen to real Earls, because they’re important.”

“Bother. You’ve got me there.”

“Yes, it’s a fair cop. So consider yourself arrested.”

“Really? How about if I just give you the goods?”

“Excellent idea. The sale of those goods should fetch a pretty penny.”

“I’ll even loan you a cart to take it all away.”

“Thank you, Mr XX. Have a nice dinner.”

Here’s a neat summary of the way the system worked. Here’s part of what the writer says about the change that was happening.

The key issue was the transition from (to use Foucault’s distinction) sovereignty to government: from a world in which crime was simply a wrong, a personal interaction between individuals or individuals and their superiors, to one in which crime was disruption, in which an offence against the criminal law was a disruption of the public peace and of the effective working of society. This meant a shift from the centrality of the court (as the place where disputants would confront one another) with no implications for the working of society, to the centrality of police and crime detection (as minimising disruption to the working of society).

To the mind of the law enforcers of the time I’m writing about, contraband goods offended those from whom the goods were stolen, and repaying those people (with smuggled goods, the offence was against the King) set the balance right. And if a little of the payment stuck to the hands of those enforcing the law, that was only fair, since they’d done the work.

So I need to go back to those scenes and rewrite them. But I have an idea!

Jude Knight Storyteller

Creating determined heroines and the men who appreciate them

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