WIP Wednesdays

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Curious facts on WIP Wednesday

LiverpoolAuthors often joke about how a law enforcement agency might react to their Internet search history. We need all kinds of curious facts and odd pieces of knowledge to give strength and depth to our plots, and make them accurate. Even writers who set their stories in a totally imaginary world of fantasy or science fiction need their creations to be believable, and historical fiction writers spend huge amounts of time checking the details of background, custom, clothing, manners, and history so that they don’t make errors that will throw a knowledgeable reader out of the story.

Some of it makes its way into the story. Some of it never does. I spent three days this month researching historical Liverpool for the two chapters where David and Gren pursue investigations in that city, and barely any of it actually appears on the page. Sigh. And a further hour’s research into canals just confirmed that a single sentence was historically possible.

Today, on work-in-progress Wednesday, I’m asking you to post about a curious fact or an interesting piece of research, and show us an excerpt in which you used (or didn’t use but were aware of) that information.

Mine is from Embracing Prudence and is the only place my Liverpool research provide context and texture to the story.

Liverpool was large and busy and smelly. England’s second biggest port, dominating Bristol and rivalling even London, its docks were a forest of ships’ masts and spars surrounded by a cacophony of loading and unloading that began at first light and continued until it was too dark to see.

“Abolition will hit them hard,” Gren observed, as they strolled to the offices of the man they had come to see.

“Disgusting trade,” David observed. Liverpool had built its wealth on the Triangle Trade: cheap manufactured goods and guns from its hinterland to Africa, to be traded to chiefs for the live bodies of their enemies. Men, women, and children across the Atlantic to the islands of the Carribean, to be traded for sugar and cotton and other tropical products. Sugar and cotton back across to Liverpool, to be fed into the manufactories that supplied the United Kingdom and beyond.

But even in Liverpool, hard though many had argued the economic costs of stopping the trade, support for abolition had grown these last twenty-five years. The Abolition Bill currently before Parliament was in its final readings, and likely this time to pass where so many had failed. Had some of the local merchants seen the signs of the times and decided to diversify? And applied the same ruthless disregard for human life to the fur trade?

They climbed the stairs to the offices in a substantial building off one of the main thoroughfares leading up from the river. Atkins had a sign on the door saying ‘Thos. Atkins, Discreet Enquiries’, and two clerks in the outer office.

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Descriptions in WIP Wednesday

The-Egyptian-room-drawingI’ve spent a large part of my adult working life in commercial writing, creating and editing legal, government, financial, and business documents. When I decided to commit to writing fiction again, I was concerned that the pared back, plain language style I had cultivated so assiduously would bleed over. Could I write a description? Could I transport my readers into another place; cause them to build pictures in their mind of rooms and landscapes and people? I worried.

I find that if I strongly visualise something myself, then simply describe it as clearly as possible, it seems to work. And so I go looking for visual inspiration, much of which finds a home on my Pinterest pages.

Below is a description from Embracing Prudence. David is calling on a client. As always, I invite you to post excerpts from your work in the comments, and to share through twitter, facebook, or wherever else you like.

David was shown through a lofty hall by an equally lofty butler, and into a parlour decorated in the Egyptian style. Last month, he had met Rede at the solicitor’s office and then had tea with him at his club, so missing the glory of the former Earl of Chirbury’s decorating style.

The room had been painted black to above head height, with gold detailing. Above that was a frieze easily two feet high; Egyptian pharaohs, slaves, mummies, soldiers, and gods painted in garish colours marching endlessly around the room, with a sublime disregard for any kind of sense or story.

The furniture carried on the theme, with blocky claw-footed pieces upholstered or painted in reds, greens and golds. Every surface, including a couple of ornately painted plinths, carried more Egyptian-inspired decoration: sphinxes, pharaohs’ heads, vases, mirrors in frames; even the candle sconces were sphinxes with holders embedded in their heads.

The door opened behind him; heavier steps than the butler’s.

“It’s ghastly, isn’t it?”

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Wickedness on WIP Wednesdays

9ba02bf02563af86012883795a80af1cIn our fictional worlds, virtue triumphs—it is probably just as well, therefore, that the villains don’t know they’re fictional, so they lay their mischievous, selfish, or downright wicked plans, sure that they will win the day.

Today’s work-in-progress Wednesday is dedicated to the ways they act. I’m looking for an excerpt—I say eight to ten lines, but whatever you need to give us a feeling for what’s going on—that shows your villain (male or female, an irritation or an evil danger) doing something that displays their real character.

My current work-in-progress is the story of David Wakefield, best friend of Rede, the hero of Farewell to Kindness. David and his heroine are private detectives back when the name for such people was thief taker, and Embracing Prudence (set earlier in the same year as Farewell to Kindness) includes one of the villains who so complicated life for Rede and Anne.

Here is the Earl of Selby. He has just blackmailed the courtesan into giving him a night in her bed.

“Tiv won’t be happy,” the Earl gloated.

“You will be, my Lord. I guarantee it,” Miss Diamond replied, her voice a husky purr.

The Earl caught up his hat and walking stick, and in one fluid movement, backed the courtesan against the wall, trapping her with his stick held across her neck.

“I’ll collect on that guarantee,” he said, his own purr sounding of threat rather than promise.

Miss Diamond did not react, standing impassively within the cage he’d formed of his body. He leaned the last few inches and slowly, deliberately, licked the side of her face, from her jaw up to her eyebrow, then grimaced.

In another supple twist, he was off her and heading for the door.

“Don’t wear powder tomorrow night,” he instructed, as he left.

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Food and drink on WIP Wednesday

Silver06Here in New Zealand it is Christmas Eve, and I’m about to make the first of a number of celebratory salads for Christmas dinner. In honour of the role that food plays in our celebrations, I thought I’d post a piece about food. But if your characters manage to get through your work in progress without eating, perhaps you have a drink or even a foodless celebration to share with us.

Here’s mine, from Embracing Prudence. Not a celebration, but certainly food—with an added ingredient in one of the items:

She transferred the contents of the tray to a table beside Miss Diamond’s chair: the pot, a cup, a plate of neatly sliced ham, cheese, pickles, and bread, and a plate of tiny iced cakes. Madame watched and Miss Diamond sat compulsively eating one marzipan shape after another. “That will be all,” Miss Diamond said. “Dupont will serve me.”

Dupont followed Prue across the room and closed the door firmly behind her.

Would there be time to get into the book room while they were occupied? She could at least find out whether she could easily pick the lock with the tools she had been carrying in her apron pocket all afternoon.

She had just taken them from her pocket and bent to examine the lock when a loud scream from below sent her jerking upright then plunging back downstairs.

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Missed opportunities in WIP Wednesday

regency lady and gentlemanSince I’m a day late, I thought I’d post a few lines about missed opportunities. This could be a meeting that didn’t happen, or words that were not said that could have saved a misunderstanding, or an action not taken, or anything else that could have meant the story’s happy ending came much sooner (bad for the characters, but great for the readers!)

Here’s mine. I needed two bits, from different chapters and different POVs. (And the incident they both refer to was last weekend’s Teatime Tattler post.)

As always, I look forward to reading your pieces. Please post in the comments, and share.

First Prue:

She would be calm; professional; indifferent. She would never let Shadow know how much she longed for him; how often she replayed that final scene between them, searching for the words that would lead to a different outcome. Perhaps if she had stayed… No. He had made his opinion of her quite clear, and she could not trust a man who did not trust her.

Then David:

He’d gone upstairs looking forward to seeing her again more than eagerly than he wished to examine. The guarded look on her face, the stiff way she held herself, stopped him in his tracks.

And her voice. Calm. Devoid of emotion. As if that passionate night had never existed. Or as if it meant nothing to her…

Perhaps, while David had spent five months longing for her, she had moved on, and his presence was an embarrassment.

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Meet-cute on WIP Wednesday

passerbyThere’s a discussion going on over on Facebook about whether the hero and heroine should meet in the first few pages in a romance novel, and I’m having my usual reaction to the ‘should’ word. But at least I have my topic for work-in-progress Wednesday!

How did your hero and heroine meet? Give me a few lines from your work-in-progress, and I’ll give you mine from Hand-Turned Tales, which comes out next week. (First meet in your work-in-progress. It’s okay if they’ve met before.)

Hand-Turned Tales has four stories in it: three short and a novella, so here are my meetings.

First, The Raven’s Lady.

The lady Felix was supposedly here to consider as a wife was pretty enough, he supposed, if one liked milk-and-water misses who never looked up from their plates, and who answered every conversational sally with a monosyllable or a giggle.

She had, sadly, changed from the lively child he remembered. But that was long ago, almost another life. She had been nine, and he fourteen, the last time they parted.

The only interesting thing about her now, as far as he could see, was the raven she kept as a pet.

Then All That Glisters.

She stumbled and would have landed in the mud, if firm hands had not suddenly caught her. As it was, in putting her hands out to break the expected fall, she had dropped her burdens. The shopping basket fell sideways, tumbling fruit, vegetables, and the wrapped parcel of meat into a waiting puddle. The bundle from the haberdashers that she carried on her other arm, thankfully, stayed intact and landed on a relatively dry spot.

She took all this in at a glance, most of her attention on her rescuer. A craggy face bronzed by the sun, amused brown eyes under thick, level brows, a mouth that looked made for laughter. He was bundled against the cold wind in a greatcoat, muffler, and cloth cap.

Kidnapped to Freedom.

There! Someone was coming. He straightened in anticipation. Yes, it was her—twelve years older and a mature women, rather than the girl he remembered, but even in the moonlight, he couldn’t mistake her.

She wasn’t alone. He couldn’t take a herd of children with him! What was she thinking?

He stepped out from the sheltering trees. The mask would hide his face, and his voice had never been the same since the last time he had been close enough to Phoebe to speak, when Chan tried to strangle him for the presumption.

And finally, The Prisoners of Wyvern Castle

The earl held out his hand, and Madeline reached for it. Even through her gloves and his, she could feel the strength in his hand, and he made no allowance for the difference in their sizes, so that she had to lean back against the weight of him as he pulled himself up. He was tall, this new husband of hers who couldn’t wait to abandon her at the altar. Tall, lean, and handsome. But very young.

“Thank you, Miss, ah, Countess. What is your name again? I am sorry. I was not listening.”

Madeline had been listening. He was Rupert Frederick George Arthur John Fleming, 7th Earl of Penworth, and Viscount of Clearwater.

“Madeline,” said Graviton, helpfully. “The family calls her Mad.”

Graviton called her Mad. Her mother, who had been all the family to love her, called her Linnie, and she had been Miss Graviton to the rest of the world. No more. Mother was dead, and Miss Graviton was gone, too, wiped out by a few words and her signature on the marriage register.

Your turn.

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Danger threatens on WIP Wednesday

Tntallon castleA story is not complete without a threat of some kind, whether physical, emotional, or financial; whether to our hero, our heroine, or someone they love; whether the danger is current and real, or remembered, or we readers simply fear it is possible.

This is certainly true of each of my Hand-Turned Tales stories. In The Raven’s Lady, my protagonists face smugglers. In Kidnapped to Freedom, the heroine comes from a life of constant threat, and has no idea what the future holds in store for her—or the identity of the man who has carried her off. In All that Glisters, the heroine’s bullying uncle beats her if she does not comply with his wishes, and he wishes her to marry his bullying friend. And in The Prisoners of Wyvern Castle, my hero and heroine face a stark future. In the passage that follows, they realise why her brother and his sister have forced them to marry.

“She is your sister. Surely she does not mean you harm?”

Rupert’s laugh was bitter. “Half-sister. And she has hated me all my life. She would harm me if it were to her advantage, but while I live—and with Lord Wyvern absent—she has the whole earldom at her command.”

The thought that flashed into Madeline’s mind was so gothic, she hesitated to give voice to it, but Rupert’s mind had clearly gone in the same direction. “While I live…” he repeated.

“If we have a child…”

“If he is a son…”

Madeline turned into him, stretching her arm across his chest to hug herself into his side, as if she could shield him from the malice of their relatives. “Then we must avoid making a child.”

He returned the hug, kissing her hair. “It will not answer, Madeline. Perhaps Graviton might hesitate to carry out his threat; his own sister, after all. But the Ice Dragon will not care who fathers my heir, as long as someone does. We cannot trust your brother to protect you.”

She shivered. “Half-brother. And he has hated me all his life.”

As always, post your own excerpt in the comments, and don’t forget to share so that others may enjoy your work in progress.

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Misunderstandings on WIP Wednesday

Lady_BlackwoodMisunderstandings are another stock-in-hand strategy by which we make sure our stories don’t end a page or two after they start. And boy, can they be true to life! How often do we make assumptions about what someone else means, or thinks, or has done—and then act on that assumption without bothering to check the facts.

Post a piece from your work-in-progress that shows a misunderstanding (either in progress or ending). Somewhere around nine lines (mine is longer this week). And please share so that other people can enjoy your extract and those of other guests.

My characters tend to talk to each other when any reasonable person would, so if a misunderstanding is to continue, I need the characters to have evidence that they don’t believe they need to check, or I need outside circumstances to prevent them from asking the question that would clear everything up. Or I clear the misunderstanding immediately and use it to bring my characters closer.

The piece I’m posting comes from the end of Kidnapped to Freedom, which will appear next month in Hand-Turned Tales. My heroine has just realised that the privateer captain who rescued her is the boy she loved thirteen years ago.

As she crossed back to the rail, adding up all the little clues she’d noticed this past week without being aware of them, he came from below and made a straight line for her.

“Good evening, Mrs Morien.” The slight husk in his voice had been turning her knees to water all week. Quickly, before her fears choked the words in her throat, she said, “Finn, when are you going to take off the mask?”

The captain went completely still. Then, slowly, he raised his hands to the back of his head, fumbled with the strings of the mask, and let it fall into one hand.

A man changes a great deal between seventeen and twenty-nine. She knew him though. She should have known him a week ago, by his eyes alone. She clamped firmly down on the hurt that he’d felt the need to hide from her. He owed her nothing. She owed him everything. He had saved her brother and sister. He was in the process of saving her and her children. He clearly wanted not to acknowledge her, and he had every right.

“You do not need to wear the mask,” she told him. “I understand. I have no claim on you and I will not be a nuisance.” She made to pass him, but he put out a hand to stop her.

“No, Mrs Moriel… Phoebe. No, that isn’t it at all. I was… The Blakes have done so much wrong to you, to your family. You must hate us all, especially me. I don’t blame you. I left you in that place. I knew what Chan was like, and I walked away. I wore the mask to make you more comfortable. No. That isn’t true. I just didn’t want to see your eyes when you rejected me. You stay here. Enjoy the fine evening for a while longer. I’ll go.”

She was so stunned that he was halfway to the hatch before she found her voice. “I don’t hate you, Finn. I don’t blame you.”

“I blame myself.”

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Interfering relatives or friends in WIP Wednesday

presentsOne recurring trope in romance fiction is the relative or friend who puts a spoke in the wheel of the budding relationship. Sometimes, the person means well and sometimes they’re just plain mean. I’ve been thinking about my own novels and shorter fiction, and each one has at least one representative of the class: Daniel in Candle’s Christmas Chair, Alex in Farewell to Kindness, the Duchess of Haverford in A Baron for Becky, and both Enid and Bosville in Gingerbread Bride (my novella in Mistletoe, Marriage, and Mayhem).

girl_with_a_green_shawl-largeThe stories in next month’s release are no exception, with two evil brothers, a wicked cousin, a diabolic sister, and a rather unpleasant aunt and uncle.

So for this week’s work-in-progress Wednesday, give me a few lines showing your secondary characters interferring in the developing love of your protagonists. Here are my aunt and uncle from All that Glisters, being their less than charming selves. Thomas has brought a present for Rose, my heroine, but has assumed her guardians will not let her receive it unless he has gifts for them. (All that Glisters is set in Victorian Dunedin, New Zealand.)

“Turned up again, have you?” Aunt Agnes said without enthusiasm.

Thomas pulled out the first of the presents with which he had armed himself. “Happy Christmas, Aunt Agnes.”

“We do not celebrate Christmas in this house, young man.” Campbell had been sitting unnoticed on a chair facing away from the door. His glower followed his voice as he rose to glare at Thomas.

“Happy new year then, Uncle,” Thomas said, peaceably, handing the old man a package wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, and passing another to Aunt Agnes.

For a moment, the two hesitated, then curiosity and avarice overcame their distaste, and they both began to untie the string.

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Disagreements on WIP Wednesday

lady in snow broughtonI nearly forgot to post my work in progress Wednesday post! Does it still count if it is Thursday in a fair part of our spinning world?

Today’s topic is the conflict that stops our romance story from being over before it even begins! Have you ever read a story that went: they met, loved at first sight, married with the blessings of all their family and friends, and lived peaceful and prosperous lives? All very nice for the participants, but not at all exciting!

My sample comes from the made-to-order story I am writing for the person who won my cat day story. My heroine has just found her husband holding the body of her pet cat, and has leapt to an immediate conclusion.

A gasp behind him told him he was no longer alone; a voice he knew, a scent he would recognise till the day he died even if he never smelled it again, composed of the herbs she strewed among her clothes, the flower oils she used to scent her soap, and something that was ineffably Callie.

He turned to meet blazing blue-green eyes in a white face. “Imp! You brute, Magnus! What have you done?”

“I just found her, Callie. She must have been trying to bring the kitten home.”

The name just slipped out. She had told him that first day, after he had interrupted her wedding and proposed himself as groom, that no-one called her Callie anymore. So he honoured her wish, and called her Caroline. But in his heart, she would always be Callie.