WIP Wednesdays

by

Dastardly doings on WIP Wednesday

I do enjoy writing villains, then giving them their comeuppance. And if my antagonists are sometimes melodramatically bad, I always have a backstory to round out their characters. At some point; at some crossroads in their life; they have stepped on a path, and then ignored multiple opportunities to make other choices. Very few of my antagonists think of themselves as villains. Some are just too self-centred to think of others at all. Some consider themselves heroes in the story of their own lives, their choices justified as being in the cause of the greater good.

This week, I’m inviting you to share an excerpt that gives us an insight into a villain of yours. Mine is from Never Kiss a Toad — a preview of a chapter that has not yet been published on Wattpad. (Never Kiss a Toad is the book Mariana Gabrielle and I are co-writing and co-publishing on her Wattpad profile and mine.)

Lady Sarah was avoiding him. 

Penchley intended to use this trip across the Indian Ocean to cement the attachment begun during the trip through Egypt, but how could he when she treated him with the polite indifference owed to a stranger, and refused any overtures? 

She blamed him for her doubts about Harburn’s intentions, though that dirty dog’s purchase of a house load of furniture to send to Italy was hardly Penchley’s fault.  

He had learned his lesson though about disclosing such stories directly to the lady. When he’d won back her trust, he’d be more careful. 

He’d been careful in Cairo. His skilful manipulation of the British Consol made him smile, even all these days later. He really was an excellent diplomat.  

Mr Finlayson, in a dither over his coming interview with His Grace the Duke of Haverford, had been grateful for the background on the duke’s decision to take his daughter to the other side of the world. “The finest of women, I assure you,” he’d said, “and you must decide for yourself what kind of cad has enemies who would attack an innocent lady, and one of such high estate. One of the slanderers was Harburn’s own cousin!” 

Finlayson expressed appropriate horror, and Penchley hastened to disclaim the rumour that Harburn and Lady Athol had once been very close, a circumstance that explained Lady Athol’s hasty marriage. “I have no evidence to confirm that story,” he said, “but I know for a fact that Harburn and the villain who attacked Lady Sarah fought over a woman in Paris. Something to do with irregular … practices, if you know what I mean.” 

“I should mention none of this to His Grace, I suppose,” Finlayson said, and Penchley hastened to assure him that the facts were known all over England. “His Grace will be please to know the truth of Lady Sarah’s innocence has reached as far as Cairo,” he explained. “Especially after the incident in Alexandria.” He explained about the fight. 

“But it hasn’t,” Finlayson protested. “I have heard nothing about any of the parties in this scandal, except from you.” 

“That’s good then. Although… Never mind.” 

Penchley allowed himself to be persuaded to share his concern that — since the rumours had clearly reached Egypt — Finlayson was not as in touch with local sentiment as he should be. “I am sure His Grace will understand,” Penchley said. “Your focus on your family, and your relationship with the local people — that is important to the British Empire too, I am sure.” 

Finlayson, who had married the daughter of an Egyptian notable and been shunted out of all further promotions as a result, chewed at the side of his lower lip, his brow creased. “I suppose I should know what the local British residents are saying,” he agreed. 

“And any travellers passing through. Over to you, sir, but if I might offer a little advice? It can never hurt to keep such a notable happy. You don’t need to mention me at all, and if the duke assumes you collected the information in the streets, using your own sources? All to the good.” 

Finlayson fidgeted nervously with his pen. “I couldn’t do that. Could I?” 

“Perhaps you could reassure the duke, father to father? Your eldest daughter is a little younger than Lady Sarah, but still… Yes. That will work nicely, I think.” 

The duke arrived then, interrupting their little tête-à-tête, but it had done the trick. Within minutes, Finlayson was expressing his sympathy for the wronged lady and the distraught father. His Grace enquired, with distant politeness, about the source of Finlayson’s information and Finlayson claimed multiple informants in Cairo, some travellers, others residents. His Grace became colder, stiffer, and more polite still.  

Before long, he rose to his feet. “I regret that I must take my leave, Finlayson.” 

“Of course, Your Grace.” Finlayson was on his feet too, bowing, his face screwed into an anxious frown. 

“We cross the desert tomorrow,” Penchley explained. “I understand we leave early to avoid the worst of the heat.” 

Finlayson bowed them out of his office and then his residence, catching Penchley by the arm to whisper, “I thought that went well, didn’t you?” 

Penchley was able to answer with complete sincerity. “Very well indeed.” 

by

Wounds and scars on WIP Wednesday

Authors spend quite a bit of time talking about the emotional wounds that motivate and limit their characters. The Void, Damon Suede called it. The Void is what the characters spend the story trying to a-void. For our protagonists, facing and filling the void is the path to happiness. For the antagonists, the void will eventually suck them in, as their efforts to avoid it drag them into actions with consequences. (Don’t you just love fiction, where bad guys lose and good guys win?)

This week, I’m inviting you to share some scars with me — physical (but the real pain is the emotional impact) or emotional.

I’ve got a couple of pieces. One is from my Valentine story for 2019, The Beast Next Door. Eric’s void stems from his mother’s rejection. He was sent to the country as a baby, to hide the shame of his strawberry birthmark, then sent overseas for medical treatment when he was a boy.

When Eric had been sent to Italy, Nanny had been given a cottage in the village and a pension. “I will write, Nanny,” he had said. “I will write to you and you can tell Charis what the letters say.” They had already reluctantly agreed that Charis would not be able to receive letters from him directly, not just because he was a boy and a flawed one at that, but because no one in the Dalrymple household knew of Charis’s secret excursions and the friendship she and Eric had formed.

“My dear boy,” the old lady told him, fondly. “I never did learn to read, and now it’s too late, for my eyes are not what they used to be.”

Charis gave her a hug. “I shall read them to you,” she promised. And so Eric wrote each letter for the two females who loved him, sending them good news and bad. Philip, the tutor assigned to instruct and care for him, who came to be his closest friend. The repeated operations to remove the strawberry growth that marred the whole left side of his face. The infection that nearly killed him. The new friends he made when he was well again and Philip took him into Italian Society. There, the scars became something of a passport to new friendships as he and Philip vied to make up more and more outrageous stories about their cause. His favourite cast him as a ruthless brawler who had met up with a bandit better than he at knife fighting. In the story, the bandit was so impressed with his courage that Eric stayed with the gang for six weeks, being trained by the bandit.

And then the letters stopped. Six years ago, the village rector wrote, expressing his condolences on the death of Mrs Parker, and enclosing the most recent of Eric’s missives, unopened. And since then, nothing.

Eric had stayed in Italy even after he reached his majority. This village had been his prison, not his home, and the only two people who had ever cared about him were lost, for surely Charis had forgotten about him as she moved into Society and acquired the suitors she richly deserved. Handsome men, men who were accepted by their families, men with their own fortunes.

But here she was, sitting beside him, her lovely eyes shining. “Oh Eric, I am so glad you are home,” she exclaimed.

And he was, he realised. Home for him had always been Nanny and Charis. “I never forgot you,” he told her.

Magnus appears in Magnus and the Christmas Angel (a short story in Lost in the Tale), which I’ve begun rewriting as The Tattooed Earl. His void also stems from family rejection and exile. In his case, it led to imprisonment on a Pacific Island, where he won the right to a warrior’s tattoo. This is from the new draft, and shows the scene mentioned in the short story, where Caroline is rescued from a loathsome marriage as she stands before the altar ready to make her vows.

She kept her back straight, her face calm; stilled the trembling of her hands by sheer force of will. No one would know she was afraid. No one but Lewis, who knew and was pleased.

When she was close enough, Lewis grabbed her hand and squeezed hard enough to leave bruises, digging in his fingers. She hid her wince, but the minister noticed and frowned, and frowned still further with Lewis instructed him to begin.

“She’s here. Get on with it man. Splice me to the damn chit. I have other engagements this afternoon, and a wife’s maidenhead to breach before I can get to them.”

“Sir!” The minister was horrified. “Your rudeness is not to be tolerated in this sacred place, and in the presence of a lady. Miss Thrushnet, such lack of respect does not bode well. It does not indeed. I urge you to consider carefully before you proceed.”

Callie shook her head. “I have no choice. Do it quickly, please.”

The minister  shook his head, but he began the words of the service. Callie barely listened, until he reached the point that he spoke to the congregation, almost, it seemed, begged the congregation. “If any of you know cause or just impediment why these two persons should not be joined together in Holy Matrimony, ye are to declare it.”

He fell silent and waited. If only someone would speak up! They would not, of course, but even so Callie turned to look at those witnessing this travesty of a wedding, ignoring Lewis’s foul words as the minister ignored his commands to proceed.

The door to the church crashed back, and a large angry man shouldered his way past Lewis’s footmen, beating them off with his walking stick and shouting, “Stop the wedding!”

His face. Callie knew that face. This was a man, and not a stripling boy, and barbaric black whorls and dots disfigured all of one side—forehead, cheek, chin, and half the nose. But she would have known him had the tattoos covered all, by his resemblance to his father and by the leap of her heart as he fought his way furiously up the nave of the church.

Magnus. It was Magnus returned from the dead to save her.

Her head felt light, and then the world spun around her and went black.

*****

The minister caught Callie as she fell, fainting at the horror his face had become. He would have to explain. The men on the ship that rescued him grew used to his tattoos during the long voyage home. Could Callie?

But no time for that now, with Lewis shaking his fist in Magnus’s face and demanding he be removed, not that anyone seemed anxious to oblige him. Lewis’s lackeys were unconscious on the ground at the back of the church; the onlookers eyed Magnus’s stick warily, and his grin with even more caution.

Magnus looked Lewis up and down and his grin broadened. The monster who had made his youth a torment was now six inches shorter than him, and showing signs of dissipation in his broadening girth, his soft jowls. While he indulged every vice in London, Magnus had survived shipwreck, fought to earn his entrance into the elite of a warrior culture, and worked his way home from the other side of the world on a naval vessel.

Lewis turned his shoulder, ostentatiously. “Get on with it,” he told the minister. “This madman has nothing to do with us.”

The minister had lowered Callie to the ground and now stood protectively over her. His words were addressed to Magnus. “Who are you, sir? And what cause or impediment do you bring?”

Lewis argued. “He is mad, I tell you. Will no one rid us of this violent lunatic?”

Magnus ignored his cousin, but raised his voice for the benefit of the onlookers. “I am Magnus Colbrooke, Earl of Fenchurch, and this lady is my betrothed.”

 

by

Family traditions on WIP WEdnesday

I love to build a bit of family history into my characters by giving them a seasonal traditional that brings back fond memories. It could be jam-making, or a special recipe for a feast, or an activity that only happens occasionally. Do you do that? Show me yours, and I’ll show you mine! As always, just post your excerpt into the comments.

Claudia began the run up to Christmas on the first of December, when she put up the Jesse Tree, a painted tree branch, fastened to a stand, that Grandma had made the year after Abbie was born. Grandma had made the felt ornaments, too, one for each day until Christmas. Each ornament had a story from the Bible, for the Jesse Tree was an old traditional way of tracking the salvation story from the creation of the universe to the birth of Jesus.

“But I don’t believe what you believe,” Claudia had explained, her father’s rigid form of Christianity having put her off religion of all kinds. But Grandma said the stories were part of her cultural heritage, and she — and Abbie too, as she grew older — could enjoy them without putting any more weight on them than on tales of King Arthur and his Round Table or Maui fishing up the North Island of New Zealand.

When Grandma died and Claudia moved to the city, she’d packed the branch and the ornaments away, but they’d come out again to decorate Abbie’s hospital room after the accident. Claudia had whiled away the days and nights spent waiting for Abbie to recover consciousness, by looking up the story to go with the ornament of the day, telling it in simpler words to the child lying still and white in the clean bed, writing it down, and illustrating the page. The pages, now bound, still recalled to her mind the long hours in the hospital, and the joy when, a few days before Christmas, a nurse had interrupted the story of Gabriel’s visit to Mary to take Abbie’s pulse, and Abbie had wrenched her hand away and demanded that the story continue.

The Jesse Tree had been part of their Christmas last year, too, as part of keeping things normal for Abbie while Claudia worried about what her former lover might do, now that the police had been convinced he was not responsible for what happened to Abbie. He was not stupid enough to attack either of them while he was under investigation, but now he was free to carry out his threats.

But as the year drew to an end, Abbie finished the intensive courses of physio, occupational, speech and psychotherapy prescribed by the hospital. Claudia was free to go anywhere she wished. So the day after Christmas, she loaded everything they owned into the back of her old station wagon, and they drove south, meandering through the country, stopping when they felt like it, until they reached Fairburn.

It had been a refuge when she’d flown into New Zealand, pregnant with Abbie, fleeing an angry boyfriend and a controlling father. It became a refuge again. They were welcomed back into the community, and not just by those who remembered them from the three years they lived here with Grandma.

Carly had found them this little studio, on the back of the property belonging to her parents, who were warmly welcoming. It was very private, hidden behind hedges and overlooked only by the main house — currently unoccupied, since Carly’s parents were on an extended overseas holiday.

Claudia wished they were home. Since the note three days ago, she had been very conscious of how isolated the building was. There had been nothing more, though. It must have been someone’s idea of a joke.

She shook off her sense of impending disaster, repeating one of the sayings taught to her by the counsellor she’d seen while Abbie was recovering. “I am in charge of how I feel and today I choose happiness.”

“Abbie,” she called. “I have the tree up. Are you ready for your story?”

Tonight, the story was just about the tree and its name. Abbie listened intently to the explanation.  A tree would grow from the root of Jesse. “Jessie,” Abbie commented.  “Jessie is at my riding.  Differen’ Jessie. Not Jesus’s granddad.” She began laying out the decorations from the shoebox that held them. “Which one comes next, Mummy?”

Claudia was picking through looking for the star that would go at the top of the tree to symbolise creation when a flicker of red caught her eye, and she leapt up to rush to the window.

“Edward!” The rabbit hutch stood in the corner of the paved patio, in its own little caged enclosure.

Abbie pressed her nose up against the glass. “It’s burning,” she observed. Flames licked all the way along the bottom and shot from the interior.

by

Consequences on WIP Wednesday

In Greek tragedy, the terrible events that unfold have their source in some wrongful action of the protagonist. The sense that ‘if only I had taken this action or avoided that one’ haunts literature still, perhaps because it haunts our lives.

Today, I’m thinking about consequences in romance. To me, the suffering is even more tragic if they in some way could have avoided it by being more careful or more kind. Do you have such a moment in your stories? A thoughtless, impulsive, or even cruel action that results in some learning experience for your hero or heroine? Share either the mistake or the consequences in the comments.

Mine is from Unkept Promises. Captain Julius Redepenning has been a careless man, and is about to meet an ex-lover in the presence of his wife and his children by his mistress. The meeting is both a consequence of previous actions and a trigger for further consequences.

Jules and Dan retreated to one corner of the room to stand over their packages, sending Fortune back to the house for the buggy.

It was there Gerta van Klief found Jules, mincing over using her parasol as a walking stick, and standing far too close. When had he discovered a preference for small slender ladies, who kept their charms discreetly covered, thus letting his imagination supply what his senses could not provide? He had been celibate for far too long, but Gerta did not set his pulse pounding the way it did at one glance from his wife.

“Why, Captain,” Gerta hummed, the musical tones that had once intrigued him now sounding forced and artificial. “I did not expect to see you here. Are you planning presents, perhaps?”

She tipped her head coyly to one side and smiled sweetly, an expression at odds with her calculating eyes. What had he ever seen in her?

“Mrs van Klief. I was not aware you intended to travel to Cape Town.”

She laughed, another practiced and false sound. “That doesn’t sound at all welcoming, dear Captain.” She walked her fingers up his chest and dropped her voice half an octave. “Let us find somewhere more private to… chat, Captain.” Her whole demeanour changed as she half turned to address a glowering Dan. “Boy! Watch your master’s packages. And be sure not to lose anything.” She dropped her voice to a purr again. “You must count your packages before we leave, dear Captain, so the boy here doesn’t sell some of them.”

Jules’s distaste turned to active dislike. They’d had an off again—on again affair for three years, and the woman still didn’t know the first thing about him. Mia’s disgust at his fornicating was well deserved.

“Good day, Mrs Van Klief. I am not free for a… chat. My son and I are attending our ladies.”

Before she could voice the spite he could see forming in her eyes, they were interrupted by his daughters, converging to take a hand each. Hannah and Mia then passed the widow, one on each side, turning to flank the girls.

“ But Jules, darling, you are here with your family,” Gerta crowed with every evidence of delight. “Aren’t they charming?” She narrowed her eyes at Mia, elegant in London fashions that made every other lady in the room appear poorly dressed. “But you didn’t tell me you had an English daughter, Jules. Do introduce us.”

Mia’s smile managed to be both gracious and feral. “Yes. Do present your acquaintance, dear Captain.” In the last two words, she reproduced Gerta’s tone and accent precisely, showing she had heard more of the conversation than was comfortable.

“The woman is of no account, Mrs Redepenning,” Jules replied. “Have you finished your shopping?”

Gerta flushed scarlet at the rude dismissal.

After one swift look of compassion, Mia answered Jules. “Not quite, Captain. Our daughters need your arbitration. They both want the same ribbons, and they insist only you can make the decision.”

“Please, Papa,” Ada begged, and on the other side, Marsha echoed the plea.

“How dare you?” Gerta’s loud voice silenced the room, as people craned to see what was going on. “After all we have been to one another? How can you treat me like this, Jules. I have given you…”

Mia interrupted before Jules could blister the infernal woman. “A word of advice, Mrs van Klief. In British society — and the Cape colony has become British — a woman of breeding does not confront her lover in public, and certainly not in front of his wife and children.” Her own voice was pitched to reach the avid onlookers. At some level beyond his anger and his embarrassment, he admired her strategy.

“It is a matter of self-protection,” she explained, kindly. “However unfair it might be, going public with revelations about irregular relationships always leads to more censure for the woman than for the man.” She dropped her voice, but not enough to prevent the audience from hearing every crisp word. “Believe me, I understand why you feel bereaved, but you must have known your lover was a married man, Mrs van Klief. Your arrangement was never going to last.”

Was Gerta bereaved? Jules looked at her sharply. It had just been about the physical encounter, had it not? For both of them? And, for Gerta, the value of his gifts, of course. Her husband had left her with little, and the presents of her lovers made up the shortfall between gentile poverty and comfortable living.

But the widow met his eyes, her own bleak.

“Goodbye, Mrs van Klief,” he said firmly, unwilling to give her any reason to think he might soften.

She looked from him to Mia and back again, and seemed to wilt. Without another word, she turned and walked away, beckoning as she left to a coloured maid who had been standing by the door and who hurried to followed.

by

Suspense on WIP Wednesday

Sweets to the Sweet by Edmund Blair Leighton  

I am currently working on a romantic suspense. It’s a contemporary, and a novella, for the Authors of Main Street Christmas Wishes volume, due out in November.

Abbie’s Wish has a woman who has retreated to a country town to keep her daughter safe, and three men who’d like to change her mind about letting a man into her life. The tag line says: Abbie’s Christmas wish draws three men to her mother. One is a monster.

How do you create suspense in your story? Give us an example in the comments.

Here’s the second scene from Abbie’s Wish. (The first has Abbie at the fair, making her wish.)

He followed the seller into the garage, which was as filthy, cluttered and disorganised as he’d feared. But the man owned a matching piece to the genuine part he had come to see, and the pair together were worth four times the asking price. Not that he’d let on. Far from it. He had every intention of beating the price down, if only because he was inside this disgusting hole risking septicaemia or worse.

He cast a disgusted look at the sink bench, where car parts, tools, greasy rags, and other bits and pieces lay scattered among plates with congealed food scraps, dirty cups half-filled with cold liquid substances, and a tottering stack of fast-food boxes. He curled his lip at the pinups above the bench — little girls, none of them over ten, the pictures home printed and ornamented with hearts and comments.

Where was the man? He craned to see over a pile of boxes of parts, some labelled, most anonymous but as he did, something about the disturbing montage registered in his mind, and in two short strides he was next to the bench, peering at the little girl with the dark curly hair and the delighted smile.

The same girl was on the next clipping, which had been pinned up first, and half covered so he could see there was someone else in the picture, but not who it was. He checked again to make sure the owner couldn’t see him, then unpinned the top photo. He would have to scrub his hands, but it was worth it. “So that’s where you are,” he murmured to the woman, quickly scanning the paragraph or two of text that went with the image.  He slipped both clippings into his pocket and was back by the doorway by the time the seller had emerged from his search, triumphantly waving the part.

He returned the smile with one of his own. Genuine, indeed. Just what he needed to complete the restoration of his classic motor cycle. A couple of weeks of evenings, and he’d be ready for a road trip. And — he patted the pocket that held the stolen pictures — he now knew just where he wanted to go.

 

by

Out of the mouths of babes on WIP Wednesday

One of the excellent roles children can play in fiction is truth teller. Too young to consider consequences or balance risks, they blurt out whatever they find interesting, and then we have the fun of writing our characters reaction. So in this week’s WIP Wednesday, I’m looking for excerpts that involve a child telling the truth when one or more listeners would prefer them to remain silent.

My excerpt is from Unkept Promises.

The captain had arrived home in the early hours of the morning. Mia had to admit he had been considerately quiet, and she would not have heard him if she’d not been lying awake. Once she was up, she ordered the servants to be quiet about their work. Let the man sleep in on the first full day of his leave. If nothing else, an hour or two’s extra sleep might grease the path of the conversation she and Jules needed to have.

She was reserving judgement about their future: unwilling to risk a dream, afraid of wasting the opportunity. Perhaps he had good reasons for all the actions that offended her, as with going out to dinner on the first night he and she were in the same country in seven years.

Last night, Adarinta was muttering bitterly about her father’s defection and Mia was silently agreeing with her, though trying not to let a hint of her opinion show, when Perdana stopped his sister’s compaints. “The captain did not wish to leave us, Ada, but he is an officer in His Majesty’s Navy, and when the admiral orders him to come to dinner, it is his duty to obey. You are an officer’s daughter. It is your duty not to complain.”

Mia avoided letting her wince show, too, she hoped. Or perhaps not, for Adarinta appealed to her. “But it is unfair, is it not Ibu Mia? I wanted Papa to stay with us.”

“The Royal Navy protects the seas for the King,” Mia replied. “That is what your father does, and your Uncle Rick, and the admiral too. Imagine if the ships could not sail because a captain wanted to stay with his little girls, and Napoleon sailed past in his ship with all his soldiers!”

“That would be bad,” Perdana agreed. “Our ships are the oak wall that protects Britain and all of its lands, at home and abroad.”

“Yes,” Mia agreed. “And the mothers, wives, and children of our brave sailors must let them go, and smile, and never complain at their leaving.” She had learned that lesson in her father-in-law’s household. He and her brothers-in-law were all naval or army officers. Her sister-in-law was a naval widow; her husband having been killed in the North Sea in a battle against French ships. Men needed to go heart-whole to war, confident that their women would provide a safe and welcoming home to which they could return.

Perdana rewarded her sentiment with a smile. “Ibu Mia knows,” he told his sisters.

 

by

Animals in WIP Wednesday

The children in my current Redepenning novel, Unkept Promises, want a pet, and I’m inclined to give it to them. The question is what. A kitten or a puppy? Or something more exotic? A parrot? A monkey? A snake, maybe? They are in South Africa, but whatever I give them will need to go home to England with them.

Have you got an animal in a WIP to share with us? Post an excerpt in the comments.

Just to be going on with, here is the dog in my newsletter subscriber short story The Bookworm and the Beast, which I’m about to start rewriting as The Beast Next Door. Once rewritten, it will be a novella for the Belles’ Valentine’s Day box set.

Charis was struggling to hold onto her indignation at Eric’s deceit, especially with his eyes so intent on hers. He was so close. If she leant forward just a bit, she could have one of those heart-stopping kisses. But she did not want to be a countess, did she? Did she, if it meant she was Eric’s countess?

She frowned, just as the door burst open again, this time propelled by Ugo, one hundred pounds of wet mountain shepherd dog, barking his delight at having found Eric — yes, and Charis as well.

In moments, the sisters had joined them. Mama, too, all of them screeching when Ugo stopped his frantic greetings to his master and Charis long enough to shake himself, and to spray the whole room with his burden of rain.

At last, Ugo overcame his excitement enough to listen to the wrath in Eric’s voice, and to slink behind Charis’s sofa, sliding underneath enough to rest a cold wet chin on her foot. “I am sorry, Mrs Dalrymple,” Eric told Mama. “He must have slipped his collar and followed me.”

Mama managed a weak smile. “He is a– a handsome beast, is he not?”

“He is a wicked creature, who thinks charm will fish him out of well-deserved trouble,” Charis said sternly, fixing her beloved with a stern frown.

 

by

Surprises on WIP Wednesday

Surprising my characters, and therefore my readers, is such fun. I’m working on three different projects at the moment — Unkept Promises, in which my heroine surprises her errant husband by turning up in the Cape Colony to look after his dying mistress and her children (my couple haven’t met in seven years); Never Kiss a Toad, the ongoing saga Mariana Gabrielle and I are publishing on Wattpad, in which the villain surprises the heroine in a dark alley and is surprised in his turn when she pulls a gun on him; and The Beast Next Door, in which my heroine flees her pushy family but finds her usual sanctuary has been invaded by a suspiciously well-cared-for dog.

Post an excerpt with one of your surprises in the comments. Meanwhile, here’s a surprise for Mia from Unkept Promises.

Mia turned left, but the servant darted in front of her, his arms wide. “Missus can’t go in there,” he said. “Missus go away. Come back another day. Captain wouldn’t like it.”

She raised her brows and glared. “The Captain is my husband, which makes this my house. Out of my way. Now.”

The glare, copied from her more formidable sisters-in-law, did the trick. He faded sideways.

“And you can make yerself useful,” Hannah said, “by bringing in Mrs Captain’s luggage before every street scamp in the town takes off with it.”

Mia had her hand on the door handle before the servant mustered another protest, and had turned it by the time he finished. “Miz Kirana, she not there.”

One glance in the room made that clear. A European girl lolled on the bed spooning fruit and cream into her mouth from a bowl — Scots or Irish by her pale skin and flaming red hair. Much of an age with Mia, at a guess, whereas Kirana was Eurasian, and in her early thirties, only a few years younger than Mia’s husband.

The girl confirmed her origins when she opened her mouth, her Irish accent plain. “Who’re ye, bustin’ into me bedchamber? Japheth, who is this gobermouch? And why did ye let ‘er in?”

“I am Mrs Julius Redepenning,” Mia said in her driest tones, “and you, I take it, are my husband’s most recent bed partner.” She ignored her sinking heart. It had been easy to overlook Jules’ attachment to Kirana, who had been his mistress for years before Mia met him. But were her hopes of making a real marriage to founder before she had a chance to even see him again?

A harrumph from Hannah. Her low opinion of men made her dubious about that part of Mia’s mission, but Mia would not give up. Not yet.

She looked around at the room, untidily strewn with clothing and jewellery. The woman had clearly been trying on garments in front of the large mirror before dropping onto the bed.

“Tidy up in here before you leave the room,” Mia instructed. “And do not think to take a thing that is not your own. My husband no longer requires your services.”

by

Out-takes on WIP Wednesday

I often cut scenes when I edit. Sometimes, I know even as I write them that they’re not going to be needed, but I still need to write them to get where I’m going. Sometimes, I love them dearly, but find out there’s a better way to achieve the same result. And sometimes I cut them reluctantly because I like them a lot, but they add nothing to plot or character.

This week, I’m busily writing a prequel to Unkept Promises that will never go in the book. It’s set seven years before the novel, and I posted the start of it a couple of weeks ago. Mia meets Jules when they are imprisoned together in a smugglers’ cave.

It is coming along, and I intend the whole sequence to be my next newsletter short story, from when Jules realises someone is in the next cell to where Jules kisses his new bride chastely on the forehead and rides off to Portsmouth and his ship.

Do you have a favourite deleted scene you’d like to share? Post it in the comments! Here’s the next bit of mine.

“Miss,” Jules hissed. The girl startled back from her father. Her face, already white, 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 that 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.

She answered a question with one of her own. “What is today? Tuesday? Or later.”

“Tuesday, probably. It was late Monday evening when I came across the smugglers. They knocked me out, but surely not for long.”

“The tenth of June? It was the fourth when Papa and I…” she trailed off, a small gulp the only sign of her distress.

Six days. Perhaps seven. “How long has your Papa…” Surely she had not been nursing a sick man all this time?

“They hit him when they attacked us, but I think — I wonder if he has had an apoplexy, Jules.” She took a deep shuddering breath and spoke again, her voice once more under her control. “He has not woken since that day. I have managed to get some water into him, but…”

“No food,” he guessed.

“They have given us nothing to eat.”

Bastards. They’d left her mostly in the dark, with no food, little water, and a dying father. He had been exploring his cell while they talked, and found no comfort in it. The door was firmly set, its hinges on the outside where he couldn’t reach them, though he ran his knife through the gap between the wood of the door and the stone of the walls, and guessed the hinges were iron by the sound they made. The door had a small hole, just big enough for someone outside to peer in, or for food or a small drug to be passed through. He pushed the shutter that blocked the hold from the other side, but it didn’t shift.

The only other gap in the stone was the high barred window between his cell and Mia’s. He put the candle up on the sill, and then added the bun, still wrapped in his handkerchief. That meant pulling himself up by the bars at the other end of the window, and the one closest to the edge shifted slightly as he put his weight on it.

by

Telling or showing in WIP Wednesday

Show, don’t tell, beginning authors are told. And it’s good advice. Put the reader inside the scene and let them watch it unfolding. Don’t give them a character (or worse still, a narrator) who fills in all the backstory in paragraph after paragraph.

Like all good advice, as you gain more experience you know when to ignore it. Showing is usually best. Except when it isn’t. Use the comments to share an excerpt with either sharing or telling, and tell us why you chose to do it that way.

I’ve been thinking of taking one of my newsletter short stories, and turning it into a novella for a box set the Bluestocking Belles might publish for Valentine’s Day 2019. Because of the format, they tend to have a bit of telling — purely and simply to keep the story short. Like this bit from the story I might rewrite, The Mouse Fights Back. (For those who don’t subscribe to my newsletter, each one contains the start of a short story written exclusively for newsletter subscribers and a link to the rest of the story plus all the others I’ve written so far. Click on the link in the side menu to subscribe for this and heaps of other free stuff.)

They were trying to kill his Mouse.

The runaway carriage might have been an accident. Such things happen. Mouse was shopping, with Jasper and two footmen in attendance, when it careened down the street, and only Jasper’s quick thinking and quicker action saved her from injury or worse. He thrust her into a doorway, protecting her with his body, and the carriage passed close enough to tear the back out of his jacket. The footmen both jumped clear. Hampered by her skirts, Mouse could well have been killed.

The shot that just missed her in Hyde Park must surely have been deliberate, though the magistrate called to investigate insisted on regarding it as carelessness at worst. “Some foolish young man making bets with his friends. Not at all the thing. Your wife could have been hurt, and how would they feel then?” Tiberius’s own investigators found a trampled spot in the bushes, probably the place where the assassin had waited to make his shot.

Tiberius doubled the guard on Mouse when she went out, and thought about confining her to the house, but couldn’t bear to curtail the freedom she was enjoying so much as she visited the art galleries, shops and museums she’d been barred from when she was under her aunt’s paw.

His own estate, his investigation into his uncle and stepmother, and Mouse’s affairs kept him busy during the day, and he couldn’t escort her as often as he wished.

As her husband, he now owned her inheritance, but extracting it—or, more likely, what was left of it—from Lord Demetrius’s hands was proving to be difficult, with his uncle’s lawyers throwing up one obstacle after another. Tiberius didn’t need the money, but he would be damned if Lord Demetrius was going to have it. Besides, as Jasper said, if they could prove the wicked uncle had stolen from Mouse’s trust, they would have a reason to have him arrested, and the whole sorry saga could be put to rest.

And then he could spend time with his delightful, fascinating, sweet little wife, who was blossoming like a rose away from the bitter atmosphere of her aunt’s home. The old harridan’s oppression had not suppressed Mouse’s intelligence or her sense of humour. It had made her afraid of almost everything, and every day he saw more reason to admire her courage as she fought through her fear and faced the world with a cheerful smile.

He dodged five more suspicious accidents and outright attacks, but none of them bothered him as much as the crowd of drunken slum dwellers who mobbed Mouse and her footmen in the street as she emerged from his house. He sallied out with the rest of the household and drove the attackers off. She was shaken, but not hurt. This time.

“You need to send her to Redfern,” Jasper scolded, after Tiberius had hugged her, examined her for injury, and handed her over to her maid so she could wash and change. “Every time she goes out in London, she is in danger.”

He was right. At the earldom’s principal estate, Tiberius could control every inch of ground for acres around. He had purged Redfern of the few servants who owed allegiance to Lady Bowden, and those who remained had either been born and brought up on the estate, or were people of his own. She would be far safer there. But he hated the thought of staying in London alone.