WIP Wednesdays

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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.”

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Travelogues on WIP Wednesday

 

I write by seeing the scene in front of me and recording what I see, so the descriptions in my books are informed by the scenes and scenery that I’ve stored in my memory over a lifetime. Do you have sections of description in your work in progress that you’ve lifted from real life? Share it in the comments.

Mine is the ferry crossing that begins the novella I’m currently writing. My regency protagonists are on a scow — a flat-bottomed coastal sailing boat — on their way to an island off the coast of Wales. I sailed as a teenager. I’ve also had the vicarious experience of sailing in historical movies and video trips. But disembarking from the boat on the beach at the other end? That part of the journey was loosely based on a trip I took a couple of weeks ago, when my beloved and I took a water taxi along the coast of the Abel Tasman National Park. Above is one of the photos I took, and below is what I made of it in the story.

A speck in the distance grew as the minutes passed. The scow tacked, and tacked again, but each oblique passage brought a clearer view – a rock resolving into a mountain that, as they approached still closer, developed a flat plain that spread out from one side.

The other passengers crowded back on deck to watch, mostly in silence, as the three-man crew scurried from one task to another, speaking to one another in unintelligible trills and verses. Philip’s manservant was watching them rather than the island, frowning a little.

“We are nearly there, Rene,” Philip told him.

“A long walk from the harbour to the house, Mr Taverton,” Rene countered. “If you can call this a harbour.” The boat glided along a small u-shaped indent in the coast, craggy rocks either side and a tiny beach at the head of the bay that sloped up to the rough grassy fields.

Turning at the sound of a rattling chain, Philip saw the anchor winch turning rapidly, chain and then rope uncoiling under the supervision of a seaman.

“Why has he let down an anchor?” The speaker was a small lady, whose fashionable redingote did not hide delectable curves. “Are we to wade to shore?”

“We are continuing towards the beach,” Philip pointed out. In the village, while he waited, he and the other two men had exchanged names and speculated on what might be ahead of them, but the three ladies had kept to the little parlour set aside for their use. Still, the little lady had spoken first. Should he introduce himself?

“If I may, Sir, mademoiselle…” Rene’s interruption was tentative.

Philip nodded his approval and Rene continued, “They will ground the boat as close to dry land as they can, and then use the anchor to winch themselves off again, when it is time to leave. I saw this many times in my village when I was a boy.”

Even as he spoke, the scow nudged gently into the sand a few yards from where the waves washed and retreated. Two of the sailors ran to fetch along a cleated plank that had been tucked along one side of the deck.

“Now, mademoiselle, you shall see how to reach the shore dry shod,” Rene said.

The lady turned to smile at the manservant before returning her attention to the makeshift gangway now being created from the bow of the boat. Philip caught his breath. Sparkling eyes shone from a heart-shaped face framed by dark blonde curls that had escaped the confines of her bonnet and that gleamed gold where the sun caught its threads.

For a long moment, until he wrenched his eyes elsewhere, they focused on lips he would have given a year of his life to touch, to kiss. She was lovely. She was also a lady, and therefore not for Philip Taverton, unemployed tutor and secretary whose origins were far more humble than his present appearance might indicate.

The plank was laid. One by one, the passengers disembarked, two of the females accepting a steadying hand from a sailor who walked in the sea beside them. Not his lady. She waved away the support and strode boldly down the plank followed by a more plainly-dressed girl of around the same age whom he took to be her maid.

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First impressions on WIP Wednesday

 

We try to make an emotional connection between our protagonists and our readers as soon as we can in the story. We also need to show the character flaws that make our protagonists interesting. Balancing these two, especially when the characters have personality aspects or life histories that are going to upset some readers, is crucial. So we try to show them doing something nice early on. I’ve just been reading a book where the hero is a drunken cad when he is 20, and frightens heroine, who is only 15. He goes on to turn his life around, and comes back to court her. Ella Quinn manages the empathy by starting the story before he got drunk, making the reasons for his state of mind clear. You could say the story has two sets of first impressions — those the protagonists make on the reader, and those they make on one another.

How about you? What first impression do your characters make? Pick an excerpt that shows the first appearance of the hero or heroine, or what one of them thinks about the other on first meeting.

Mine this week is a newly written passage from To Wed a Proper Lady, which comes immediately after the rescue of the little boy that has already been published as part of The Bluestocking and the Barbarian (you can read it here).

“Oh my,” Felicity said. Sophia had not even noticed her until she spoke. All of Sophia’s attention was on the rider. Oh my, indeed.

“So that is what all the gossip is about,” her sister added. “No wonder he has ruffled the feathers of the biddies and the sticklers. He looks very exotic, does he not? And yet, he speaks like one of us and has the most elegant manners.”

“We must be glad he was there, and in time to help,” Sophia said, struggling to keep her voice calm when the thud of her heart must be audible throughout the village. “Tommy might have been badly hurt.” She managed to drag her eyes away from the retreating horsemen. Undoubtedly, Lord Elfingham had forgotten her already. He did not look back.

She turned towards the Children’s Sanctuary. Felicity fell into step beside her, still talking.

“I must say, he was not at all what I expected. To hear Hythe, one would think him a wild barbarian, uncouth and fierce, without manners or education.”

Sophia repressed a snort with some difficulty. “Hythe has been listening to the wrong Haverford. Our Godmama knew Lord Sutton, his father, when he was only a third son, before he left England to seek his fortune. Aunt Eleanor says that Lord Sutton was married to a Persian princess, and his children were raised as royalty, as well as English ladies and gentlemen. They were, Aunt Eleanor says, given the finest education.”

“His Grace of Haverford has forbidden Her Grace and Lord Aldridge to attend any event at which they might meet Lord Sutton or any of his children. Is that because she and Lord Sutton were once acquainted?”

Sophia knew that look on Felicity’s face. With the least encouragement, she would be interrogating the dowagers and the old maiden aunts, and increasing the storm of scandal around Lord Sutton and his family even further.

“Hythe says that the Duke is incensed at the dilution of another duke’s blue blood.” Felicity gave a little skip at the horror of it all. Hythe did say that, but Sophia was sure Haverford’s virulent enmity was more personal than a distaste for miscegenation.

“Apparently, Haverford believes that English dukes should marry only English ladies of an appropriate rank,” Sophia replied. “Foreign princesses need not apply.”

“If, in fact, Sutton did marry the foreign princess.” The scandalous nature of the conversation was delighting Felicity.

Sophia looked back over her shoulder. The horsemen were visible in the distance, just cresting the hill beyond the village. One of them had stopped — his horse gleaming golden in the sun. It was foolish to think she could feel his intense gaze from this distance. She couldn’t even see his features. But she did see one hand raised in salute before he wheeled the horse to follow his companions.

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Blurbs on WIP Wednesday

Who loves writing blurbs? Not me. Encapsulate the essence of an 80,000 word story in ten lines? It’s hard, isn’t it.

Today, I’m asking you share a blurb for a work-in-progress or one that you’re rewriting. Let’s help one another to refine our pieces.

Mine is from Unkept Promises, which is nearly on its way to beta readers.

When Mia Redepenning sails to Cape Town to nurse her husband’s dying mistress and adopt his children, she hopes to negotiate a comfortable marriage at the same time. Falling in love with the man is not on her to-do list.

Jules Redepenning has been a naval officer at war for twenty years, and away from England for most of that. He rarely thinks of the child bride he left after their wedding seven long years ago—after all, he married her merely to protect her. He certainly doesn’t expect to find his wife in his Cape Town home, a woman grown and a lovely one, too.

They must part ways, each with their own duties, before they can do more than glimpse a possible future together. At home in England, Mia must fight an enemy for the safety of Jules’s children. Imprisoned in France, Jules must battle for his self-respect and his life.

Will they win their way back to one another and their dreams?

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First seven sentences in WIP Wednesday

The journey begins with the first step.

I’ve typed THE END in Unkept Promises. I’ve also written the first paragaphs in To Mend the Broken Recluse, so I’m thinking about ends and beginnings. This week, how about putting seven sentences in the comments. You choose what they begin: the book, a chapter, a new scene.

Here’s mine.

The crows rose in a flock over the tower on the borders of Ashbury land, a cacophany on wings. Val straightened and peered in that direction, shading his eyes to see if he could tell what had spooked them. It was unlikely to be a traveller on the lane that branched towards the manor from  the road that passed the tower. After three years of repulsing visitors, the only people he ever saw were his tenant farmers and the few servants he had retained to keep the crumbling monstrosity he lived in marginally fit for human habitation.

He bent back to the plough, but called the team to a halt again when a bird shot up from almost under their hooves. Sure enough, a lapwing nest lay right in the path of the plough. Val carefully steered around it. He knew his concern for the pretty things set his tenants laughing behind his back, but they didn’t take up much room, and they’d soon hatch their chicks and be off to better cover

Okay. That’s eight sentences, but I won’t count if you don’t.