WIP Wednesdays

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Animal friends on WIP Wednesday

 

Animal companions can be useful in a book. They show our character’s empathy and kindness (or lack thereof). They can be comic relief. They might, if the character doesn’t have anyone else to talk to, be an ideal recipient of the kind of information we want the reader to know and need the character to talk about.

So give me an excerpt with an animal. Mine is from To Wed a Proper Lady, the rewrite of The Bluestocking and the Barbarian. My hero is gate crashing a house party with the help of his horse.

Limp,” James said to Seistan. “Limp, my lovely, my treasure, my Jewel of the Mountains.”

The horse obeyed his master’s hand signals and limped heavily as they turned through the gates of the manor, beginning the long trek along the dyke that led between extensive water gardens to where Lady Sophia Belvoir was attending a house party.

In his mind, James was measuring his reasons for being here against his reasons for staying away.

His grandfather faded fast, and the end of the year – and his reprieve – was fast approaching. Lady Sophia was the other half of his soul, and only she could fill the place in his heart and at his side. Every meeting since the first had merely confirmed the connection in his mind. Was it only his imagination that had him believing she felt it too?

Surely her eyes spoke for her, finding him as soon as he entered a room and following him until he left, blue-gray eyes that veiled themselves when he caught them watching, in the longest soft brown lashes he had ever seen. She was not, as these English measured things, a beauty: her arched nose and firm chin too definite for their pale standards, her frame too long and too robust. They preferred dolls, like her sister, and Sophia was no doll.

On the other hand, there was Hythe’s threat and Lady Sophia’s rejection to consider. Beyond that, his father’s greatest enemy owned the house he approached. The party would be full of aristocrats and their hangers on, ignoring him until they found out whether he was a future duke or merely the half-breed bastard of one.

The family needed him to marry a strong woman, one with family ties to half the peerage of this land to which they somehow belonged, though he had only first seen it eight months ago. His foreign blood and upbringing meant he needed a wife who was English beyond question, and English nobility to her fingertips.

James needed to marry Sophia; had needed to since he first saw her in a village street. And then he found she had all the connections his family could desire. Surely their love was fated?

The house came into view—a great brick edifice rising four stories above the gardens and glittering with windows. Nothing could be less like the mountain eerie in which he had been raised, but he squared his shoulders and kept walking, soothing Seistan who reacted to his master’s nerves with a nervous sideways shuffle.

“Hush, my Wind from the North. We belong here, now. What can they do, after all?”

Beat him and cast him out, but from what he knew of the Duchess of Haverford, that was unlikely to happen.

“It is, after all,” he reminded his horse with a brief laugh, “the season of goodwill.”

The stables were off to one side, on a separate island to the main house. At the fork in the carriageway, James hesitated, tempted to take Seistan and see him cared for before chancing his luck at the house. If they invited him in, he would need to hand his horse over to grooms who were strangers while he consolidated his position.

But if they turned him away, he might need to remove himself at speed, Seistan’s convenient limp disappearing as fast as it appeared. Besides, in the mountains between Turkmenistan and Persia, as in England, one did not treat a private home as a caravanserai. He must be sure of his welcome before he took advantage of their stables.

The carriageway crossed the moat surrounding the house and ended in a generous forecourt. James left Seistan at the foot of the long flight of steps leading up to the front door, giving him the command to stay. Seistan stood, weight on three legs and ears pricked with interest as he watched his master climb the steps. Nothing short of outright panic would move the horse from his silent watch before James gave the counter command.

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Where to start on WIP Wednesday

At last, Unkept Promises has gone to the proofreader, and I’m two chapters in to the novella for the next Bluestocking Belles project. Where to start is always a question — I often cast around for a while, and I don’t always get it right.

This week, I’m inviting you to post the first few paragraphs from your work-in-progress. Here’s mine.

If the two of them made it out of the near-invisible city streets alive, Matilda Grenford was going to kill her sister Jessica, and even their honorary aunt, the Duchess of Haverford, wouldn’t blame her. Angry as Matilda was, and panicked, too, as she tried to find a known landmark in the enveloping fog, she couldn’t resist a wry smile at the thought. Aunt Eleanor was the kindest person in the world, and expected everyone else to be as forgiving and kind as she was herself. Matilda could just imagine the conversation.

“Now, my dear, I want you to think about what other choices you might have made.” The duchess had said precisely those words uncounted times in the more than twenty years Matilda had been her ward.

When she was younger, she would burst out in an impassioned defence of whatever action had brought her before Her Grace for a reprimand. “Jessica is not just destroying her own reputation, Aunt Eleanor. Meeting men in the garden at balls; going out riding without her groom; dancing too close.”

Was that the lamppost by the corner of the square? No; a few steps more showed yet another paved street with houses looming in the fog on both sides. Matilda stopped while she tried to decide if any of them were in any way familiar.

Meanwhile, she continued her imaginary rant to the duchess. “Even in company, she takes flirtation beyond what is proper. This latest start — sneaking out of the house without a chaperone or even her maid — if it becomes known, she’ll go down in ruin, and take me and Frances with her.”

Matilda had gone after her, of course, taking her maid, but she’d lost the poor girl several mistaken turns back. Matilda had been hurrying ahead, ignoring the maid’s complaints, thinking only about bringing Jessica back before she got into worse trouble than ever before. Now Matilda was just as much at risk, and she’d settle for managing to bring her own self home, or even to the house of a friend, if she could find one.

Haverford House, for preference. Turning up anywhere else, unaccompanied, would start the very scandal Matilda had left home to avoid. If Jessica managed to make it home unscathed, it would have to be murder.

In her imagination, she could hear Aunt Eleanor, calm as ever. “Murder is so final, Matilda. Surely it would have been better to try something else, first. What could you have done?”

Matilda startled herself with a bark of laughter that echoed oddly in the fog.

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Quarrels on WIP Wednesday

The course of true love can’t possibly run smooth, or we wouldn’t have a story. Quarrels between the lovers are a standard part of most romances, and if not outright quarrels, as least misunderstandings.

This week, I’d love to see an expert where one protagonist is offended by or suspicious of the other. Maybe it isn’t an outright quarrel, yet. But we can sense one coming!

Mine is from Unkept Promises. Jules has returned home to find that the wife he hasn’t seen in seven years has moved in while he was away.

His little wife had grown. Not ‘up’ exactly. She was still a tiny creature, her head no higher than his chest, but no-one would take her for a schoolgirl now! Was it the modern fashions that gave her curves he’d not seen seven years ago—not a lush endowment but decidedly female?

Annoyed with her though he was, he could not deny that his body responded to hers, as if something primitive within him rejoiced in the link formed by their long-ago wedding and yearned to set seal to his claim. A physical lust. That was all. It could be ignored.

But the change in her was not only physical. She had been an endearing mix of child and adult. Her isolated life as the only child of a reclusive scholar had given her a wisdom and maturity beyond her years and the innocence of a much younger girl. Now she was a woman. Confident and in charge.

Which was extremely irritating, since she had placed herself in charge of his house! As he allowed his two daughters to drag him back upstairs and show him and Dan around their domain, he had to concede she was competent. No. More than competent.

He couldn’t complain about the changes in the nursery—new paint, shelves instead of trunks for books and toys, new furniture—sturdy painted furniture that would withstand much more activity than the rejects from the rest of the house that had been there before.

“Sit in Ibu Mia’s chair, Papa,” Ada commanded.

Marsha scoffed. “Not Ibu Mia’s. Papa is too big. Sit in Hannah’s chair, Papa.”

“Is Hannah looking after you while she is visiting?” Jules was not above finding out his wife’s intentions from his children, if he could.

“Hannah is not visiting. Hannah is our new nurse,” Ada explained. She was dragging his duffel bag from where Dan had dropped it by the door.

Marsha offered her morsel of information. “Hannah used to be nurse to our cousin Daisy, but Daisy has a governess now, so Hannah came to be our nurse.”

“And to look after Ibu Mia,” Ada corrected. “Hannah said Lord Henry said Ibu Mia could not travel all this way on her own. Is Lord Henry our grandfather, Papa? Hannah says he is.”

“Yes, sweetheart,” Jules confirmed. “Lord Henry is my father, so your grandfather.” Father had approved this trip, had he? He had never been happy about Jules’s irregular living arrangements, Jules was sure of that, though his letters were devoid of any criticism. Susan, Jules’s sister, was more direct in her letters, castigating him for leaving his wife for so long. They probably sent Mia to bring Jules to heel.

But he wouldn’t be leashed by her or anyone else, either.

 

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Inspiration on WIP Wednesday

Writers are commonly asked, “Where do you get your ideas?” I might be asked that more often than many, since my brain teams with characters and plots. So this week, I want you to share your inspiration for a character, a plot, a scene, or something else for your story, and an excerpt from the story.

The scene below is near the end of my next newsletter subscriber story, Look Into My Eyes. Every two months, I give away a story with my newsletter. The subscriber only page now has links to eleven stories, and this one will make twelve. To subscribe, please fill in the form on the newsletter tab or in the right menu bar.

My inspiration was the song by Peter Sarstead, Where do you go to (my lovely), released 1969. My version is around 3,500 words long, and is set against the glittering world of the English ton just after the end of the Napoleonic war.

The end-of-season ball thrown by the Duchess of Fambrough — the current duchess, though one does not doubt the dowager assisted — will be the talk of Society long after the Season ends. Not for its appointments, or the excellence of the supper or the musicians, though these were fine, indeed. Not for the quality of the assembly, though the invitations had gone out to everyone of significance, and many who merely hoped they were.

No, the defining moments of the Fambrough ball came shortly before the supper waltz, when Lord Charming, arriving late but impeccably dressed with his usual elegant flair, strolled down the stairs into the ballroom, his arms full of roses, and marched straight across the floor, his eyes fixed on the Paragon herself.

Some say he had hailed the duke when that gentleman was riding in Hyde Park that morning, and that the two of them had spoken earnestly for close to half an hour, their horses pacing side by side. Others report he visited during the time for calls, carrying even more roses and attended by two footmen similarly burdened. The ducal house was not receiving, being consumed with preparations for the ball, but he left the roses behind when he departed.

So tonight was Lord Charming’s third encounter with the ducal household, and the assembled onlookers held their collective breath in order not to miss a moment of the drama that played out before them. The duke was between the viscount and his stepmother. His Grace moved to one side as she stood. The scandalous gentleman approached close enough to touch, and those close enough heard him say, “I promised you roses, Marie.”

Those who murmured at his familiar address were shushed by those around them. His lordship ignored them all as he handed her his roses. “These are from the rose garden at Welling. The plums are ripening on the trees. I had hoped to bring you cherries, but my gardener says they will be next week.”

These were not the loverlike words we expect from Lord Charming, and his expression was unexpectedly open. Serious, too, as was the lady’s.

“What of the conservatory, Rick?” she asked. Another murmur at the intimacy of first names, again subdued by ferocious gestures.

“We are owed clement weather, are we not? But it stands ready, Your Grace, to protect us through storms.”

The duchess looked up from her roses and their eyes met. Lord Charming moved to take Her Grace in his arms. “Will you honour me with a waltz, Marie?”

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Courtship woes on WIP Wednesday

Cicely and Gwendoline put their would-be suitors through their paces in The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde.

They met, they fell in love, they wed, they lived happily ever after. Where’s the story in that? We need conflict. We need challenges. In romance, we need courtships to go wrong.

So that’s the theme of this week’s invitation. Share an excerpt from your romance where a courtship is failing to take off, or is taking a wrong turn. Mine is from To Wed a Proper Lady.

When the other guests went up to change for dinner, James met Lady Sophia by the stables. He drove her over to the far corner of the estate, nearly a mile by the lanes, happily filling in the time by telling her the history of the Turkmen horse breed.

She asked interested and intelligent questions, which pleased him enormously. He’d love for his own passion for horse breeding to be something they could share. From his observation, couples who had at least some interests in common had better marriages and happier lives.

Should he hint at his desire to make her his wife? She must suspect by now, surely. He’d been careful to stay within the boundaries of an English courtship, as explained to him by his aunt: no more than one dance an evening, no steering straight to her side as soon as he saw her at any event they both attended, no singling her out without including her sister to give the appearance of propriety, no gifts beyond a polite note or a bunch of flowers. But within those constraints, he had been faithfully attentive for months.

And he’d sought her out in Cheltenham and organised this journey to spend time with her. Did that not tell her his intentions? Although she believed he was on his aunt’s errand.

In Para Daisa, his mother or another female relative would already have met with a female relative of hers. In England, he should, according to the courtship rituals Aunt Grace had described, call on the Earl of Hythe, the male head of the lady’s family.

Given Hythe’s attitude, such a meeting was unlikely to produce the results James needed.

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First meeting on WIP Wednesday

 

This week, I’m thinking about first meetings. My Maximum Force story is percolating in my head, and I’m also planning the first meeting scenes in books 3 and 4 of Children of the Mountain King. As in Unkept Promises, the heroines of those two books met their heroes when they were still schoolgirls, and I haven’t decided whether the scenes will be in flashback, or just narrated as a memory. Max’s heroine, Serenity, is an adult, though — whatever the elders of her cult may think.

Today, I’m inviting authors to give me an excerpt with the first meeting between the hero and the heroine. Mine is from the first chapter of Unkept Promises. The first two chapters are set seven years before the rest of the book. Jules has been captured by smugglers and locked up in a cell.

The light came as a surprise, shining like a beacon from the other side of a barred opening set high up in one wall. Standing, Jules managed to reach the bars and pull himself up, to look through into another cell very much like his own. A man lay still, curled on a mess of rags and clothing. His eyes were shut, and he had not responded to the girl who crouched beside him. She was a skinny child, still boyish in shape, but Jules did not suppose that would discourage the smugglers from making use of her body or selling her to someone for that purpose. He made an instant vow to save her, whatever the cost.

The girl held the candle she had lit away in one hand to cast its light without dripping its wax, and brushed back the hair that fell over the man’s forehead. “Oh, Papa,” she said, her voice trembling.

“Miss,” Jules hissed. The girl startled back from her father. Her face, already pale, turned whiter as she faced the door, putting her body between herself and the unconscious man.

“I’m a prisoner,” Jules reassured her. “In the next cell.”

The girl held the candle high as she stood, peering towards the sound of his voice. He kept talking to guide her. “Lieutenant Julius Redepenning of His Majesty’s Royal Navy, at your service, Miss. I am going to get out of here, and I’m going to take you and your father with me.”

The face turned up to him was just leaving childhood behind, but the eyes shone with intelligence and her response indicated more maturity than he expected. “I hope you can, Lieutenant. But if your cell is as sturdy as mine, I beg leave to reserve judgement.” She sighed. “I am sorry for your predicament, but I will not deny I am glad to have company.”

“May I borrow the candle?” Jules asked. Her eyes widened in alarm and he rushed to add, “just for long enough to check my cell. They left me without light.” Without food or drink, either, but he would not tell her that. Perhaps the smugglers intended to supply him, and if they didn’t, he would not take the supply she needed for herself and her father.

She passed the candle up, her worry palpable, and he hoisted himself higher with one hand so he could stretch the other through the bars. “I will be careful, Miss, I promise.”

“Mia,” she said. “Euronyme Stirling, but formality seems out of place, here.”

He returned her smile. She was a brave little girl; he had to find a way out for her. “Call me Jules,” he offered, “as my friends do.”

He rested the candle—a stubby bit of wax with a rope wick—on the sill between the bars and dropped, shaking the ache out of the shoulder that had taken most of his weight. When he reached the candle down, Mia let out an involuntary whimper at the loss of light.

“I have it safe,” he said. “You shall have it back in a minute.”

“I do without it most of the time,” she replied. “It’s just—I have always known I could light it again.”

Most of the time? “How long have you been here?” Jules asked, keeping his voice light and casual against the lump in his throat at her gallantry.

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The villain of the piece on Work in Progress Wednesday

This week’s challenge is to post an excerpt with your villain. I’m looking for his entry onto the stage; as always, just post your piece into the comments.

I’ve been rethinking To Wed a Proper Lady. It had mired in the last third, and I needed to take a step back. I’ve now done a hero’s journey chart for both protagonists, and mapped the overarching plot line for the series, and one of the things I’ve decided is to introduce my series villain early on. He has been lurking in the background of a number of my books, but it is in Children of the Mountain King that he steps up into the key negative protagonist role. He dies somewhere before the fifth book, but the nastiness he foments isn’t all solved till the end of the sixth.

The Duke of Haverford had been at the ball for nearly two hours, which was unusual enough to catch Sophia Belvoir’s attention. He’d been attending more events in polite Society than usual this Season, the first for two of the duchess’s wards, but this was the first time Sophia had known him to stay beyond the first half hour

He was strolling through the crowded reception rooms, stopping from time to time for a brief conversation, then moving on. After a while, a pattern emerged: all the people he stopped were men, peers, and members of the loose political group that voted with Haverford in the House of Lords. What was his Grace of Haverford campaigning for now?

The Earl of Hamner asked Sophia to dance. She was sought as a partner by husbands and confirmed bachelors who wished to dance without giving rise to gossip or expectations. Twice-betrothed, she was clearly not a wallflower. Twice-bereaved, she was nearly, but not quite, a widow. The never-wed sister of a protective earl, she was off-limits for seduction, but at twenty-five she was too old to expect a proposal of marriage. Being outside the expected categories for high-born females was a sort of freedom, she had discovered.

When Hamner returned her to the matrons with whom she’d made her debut, she was the only one not to blush and turn away as Haverford paused in front on them. His attention was on Hamner, another of his acolytes, and not on the ladies, but they fluttered as if a fox had strolled into the dovecote.

Not far from the truth, though if the elderly rakehell was on the hunt tonight, it was for naïve politicians and not the young wives of other men.

Sophia, protected by her virgin status and her relationship with the evil old man’s wife, curtseyed and said, “Good evening, Your Grace.” He cast a wintery eye in her direction. He had no time for women who did not conform to his expectations, and she was surprised even to receive a stiff nod. “Lady Sophia.” She had heard the man had charm; had even seen him executing it. Clearly the elderly spinster sister of the Earl of Hythe did not warrant his further attention. “Hamner, a word, if you please.”

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Dancing and other moves in WIP Wednesday

The chair of the panel I was on last week writes television scripts. “These people all write full books,” he told the audience in his introduction. “I just write a few words and somebody else makes the pictures happen.” In a novel, we need to describe the action in a way that lets the reader see it. They make the pictures happen, but we provide the raw material in our words. This week, I’m inviting you to post excerpts that describe activities — fighting, riding, dancing or whatever else your characters are involved in. Mine is from To Wed a Proper Lady, and describes a dance.

At last, it was time for their dance; a country dance in the long form, which was fortunate, for they would have time for conversation in the privacy formed by the music and the concentration of the other dancers. First, though, James could take his turn with her in the patterns of the dance, his hand holding his hers, his gaze fixed on her fathomless brown eyes. A pattern of two couples followed, a swapping of partners, and then back to circle with Sophia before they separated once more, each to their own row.

The couple leading the line wove in and out of the dancers before promenading back up the middle of the rows, and setting off the patterns again: each couple meeting and circling, two couples, swapped partners, and back to Sophia again before the lead couple danced away down to the other end of the rows and the next couple began the sequence over again.

In their turn, he and Sophia would find themselves odd pair out at the end of the rows, and would stand aside for several minutes. Meanwhile, James enjoyed Sophia’s grace, the fleeting touches of her hand, even the sway of her body against his when they linked elbows in passing. Under the blazing candlelight, he could not tell whether the flecks in her pupils were green or gold, but her hair certainly glinted gold as the well anchored curls in her coiffure bounced with the vigour of the dance.

At last, came their turn to lead the line, and then to circle around to the back, there to stand and rest for a few minutes. James kept his eyes on the other dancers, rather than allowing them to feast on her as he would prefer.

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Random thoughts on WIP Wednesday

I often have random scenes playing themselves out in my head, not just from the books I’m currently writing but from books I’m not going to write for a while. Do you do that? Share an excerpt in the comments from a scene that’s in your head and not yet on paper.

Mine is from the Redepenning book after next, and it might be the beginning. Or I might begin with a scene from Valeria.

Harry sat drinking a coffee and pretending to read a book while the abyss hovered, a seething mass of black memories, with tendrils of despair ever reaching, and ever having to be beaten back so he could pretend that all was normal.

The abyss, rather than the lingering weakness from his wounds, was the true reason he was still staying at his father’s townhouse instead of finding rooms nearer to the barracks. The need to mimic a well man before Brigadier General Lord Redepenning dragged him from bed every morning, and gave him a motive to keep the darkness at bay for another day.

Lord Henry was on the other side of the library study reading the files and letters sent over from the horse guard. He pretended, too. He and Harry both knew that he worked here rather than his office at the Horse Guard for fear of leaving his eldest son to his own devices, rather than because of the encroachments of age. If neither spoke of it, it did not have to be faced.

”Harry.” An odd note in Father’s voice sparked a thread of interest. Father was holding out to him the letter in his hand. “Tell me what you think of this.”

Harry set down the book and his cup and crossed the room, standing beside the desk to scan the two pages.

He’d not completed the first paragraph before he collapsed into the nearest chair. “A widow? She thinks I’m dead?” A few lines more and he lifted his head, meeting his father’s eyes. “I have a son? Father! I have a son.”

”And, it seems, a wife you acquired in Spain five years ago and never mentioned,” Father replied.

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Danger in WIP Wednesday

Continuing my plot development principle of ‘what could possibly go wrong’, I’ve just dropped a heroine through a hole in the attic floor. Take a moment and share in the comments — any passage where a character in your work in progress is in danger, and any type of danger (physical, mental, social, or spiritual).

A slight sound behind him or perhaps just a change in air set him spinning; instincts honed during years with the rebels in the Lattari Mountains south east of Naples propelled him across the open space towards the intruder, his right hand itching for the knife he no longer wore hidden up his sleeve.

He managed to pull himself up short before he took Miss Duncastle by the throat, but not before he shocked her into panicked flight. She took two quick steps backwards, then scurried sideways through a narrow gap into a part of the attic he had not yet explored.

“Don’t be frightened!” he called out. “Miss Duncastle, it is quite safe. I was startled. I would not hurt you.” His calls of reassurance were drowned by crashing sounds in the direction of Miss Duncastle’s footsteps.

A woman’s scream — her scream — had him squeezing through the gap in pursuit. “Miss Duncastle!” he shouted again.

“Be careful! The floor!” Her voice was strained, and as he emerged into a cleared area under a dormer he could see why. The floor had given way, taking Miss Duncastle with it. She clung to a beam that still remained, her knuckles white with the strain. Below — some 16 feet below — he could see a room, empty but for items that must have fallen through the hole. The beam was frail. He could see at a glance that it was slowly giving under the weight of the lady. It would certainly not take his.

Even with most of his attention on Miss Duncastle and her peril, he deduced what must’ve happened. A towering stack of furniture and wooden boxes had slammed down on floorboards softened by damp rot. Some of them had scattered across the open space. Most had crashed through the hole to create a dangerous landing place for the lady hovering above.

“Hold on,” he told her.

Her eyes wide in her white face, she nodded. “I’ll try.”