Since 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.
A day or two shy of one year ago, I dipped my toe into the water of indie publishing, wrestling with the intricacies of kindle direct publishing and the infamous Smashword’s Meatgrinder program to put Candle’s Christmas Chair up into the e-retailers in time for Christmas.
Nearly 70,000 downloads later, Candle is about to be replaced as my permafree by Hand-Turned Tales, three short stories and novella currently at those same two organisations waiting for their review and approval.
And in the meantime, I’ve published two novels (Farewell to Kindness and A Baron for Becky), half-completed another (Embracing Prudence), and written Gingerbread Bride, a novella published in the Bluestocking Belles box set, Mistletoe, Marriage, and Mayhem. The box set has sold close to 11,000 copies, and raised upwards of US$3,500 for The Malala Fund.
So with more than 75,000 downloaded ebooks in my first year as a published romance writer, it’s time to give thanks.
Thanks for my family. For my wonderful husband, who ever and always supports and encourages me. For my sister, who is my first reader. For my family, who accept my neglect with amused tolerance.
Thanks also for the other wonderful authors I’ve met and worked with. For the Bluestocking Belles, without whose support, friendship, encouragement, and incitement, I would not have accomplished nearly so much this year, and especially for Mari Christie and Carol Roddy, my partners in many different kinds of theoretical mayhem. For the Romance Writers of New Zealand, who gave me my first conference, my first award, and my first official role in our industry. For all the writing friends I’ve made on FaceBook and Twitter and in Real Life.
And, of course, thanks for my readers. For the beta readers who coax and cajole me to do my best. For the Belles Brigade, who support all the Belles so magnificently. For the subscribers to my newsletter and my blog. For followers on FaceBook, Twitter, and Pinterest. For anyone who has left a review of any of my books, or even a comment when we’ve passed one another in cyberspace letting me know that my words have struck a chord.
There’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.
Now there’s a large claim for you. I had a five minute spot at the local book fair on Sunday, and I chose that as my topic, and my blog post today repeats the main points I made.
Romantic fiction is feminist almost by definition
Romantic fiction is that genre of fiction where one of the major plot lines is the growing romantic attachment between two of the main protagonists, ending in the hope of a happy future together.
And I’m defining feminism as the belief that women should have the right to the same social, economic, educational, and other opportunities as men, and should be as free as men to make choices about them.
When a genre is written largely by women (80% of romantic fiction authors are women), largely for women (90% of readers), and almost always about women, it has to be about the choices of women.
In other other genres, women are plot devices. In all romantic novels (except in the subgenre of gay fiction with two male protagonists) a women is one of the key protagonists, if not the main protagonist.
And even in the books we all love to hate, when the heroine is TDTL (genre initialism meaning ‘too dumb to live’) and the hero is a creep with a particularly fine set of abs, the plot hinges on the choices made by women. However constrained her rights may be, however constrained her opportunities, the novel exists because of the choices of the heroine. And the novel isn’t over until the heroine gets what she wants.
Today’s romantic heroines are often strong women
Twenty-first century writers create stories for twenty-first century women. While not all readers want to read about strong-minded independent women, I like to write them. I think they’re more interesting, and I think the men who can appreciate them are more interesting, too.
My first book, Candle’s Christmas Chair, features a tradesman’s daughter who is put out that she cannot inherit her father’s business, but who has grown her own, making invalid chairs, and has no intention of giving that up for marriage.
“Papa, have you thought about where you and Mama will go when you retire?”
“After Christmas we will decide a place and a date. Do you have a place you would like, daughter?”
“I do not mind, Papa. As long as it has a workshop big enough for me to make my chairs.”
“You should be making babies, not chairs,” Papa grumbled. “Marry your viscount or choose another man, and give me and Mama grand-babies.”
“I would marry a man who would let me make my chairs,” Min said.
“Ah Min. Your Mama was right. She told me that if I encouraged you I would end up breaking your heart. Min. Little Owl. Face facts. Women aren’t meant to make carriages, even your little ones. I’ve let you make your chairs and sell them, and a very good job you have done of it too. I’ve been very proud of you. But a man doesn’t want his wife to go out to work.”
“You let Mama work in the harness shop,” Min protested.
“Remember that, do you? I had no choice, Min. We didn’t have the money, when we started out, to hire a good harness maker. Mama was the best. But as soon as I could, I replaced her so she could stay home. A man doesn’t want his wife to go out to work. Looking after the home, visiting her friends. That’s enough.”
Not for me, Min wanted to say.
In Farewell to Kindness, the heroine is more traditional in her dreams (and that, too, is a choice). But she is also a champion archer, and uses that ability to save those she loves.
“Who are you? What do you want?” The drink thickened his voice. “If I shout, I’ll wake the whole household.”
“The household are all either below stairs or well above. And you will have, at most, one shout before I put this arrow between your eyes. I have demonstrated I can.” It was a woman’s voice, low and determined.
George glanced back at the arrow, and swallowed.
“You won’t shoot me. You’re a woman.”
“I will shoot you with pleasure, if I must,” the woman said. “But shooting you is not my first choice.”
He pulled himself straight, glaring. “You won’t get away with this. Don’t you know who I am?”
“Do you not know who I am? I am the woman you owe a future to. And I mean to collect. You will give me either my future or my revenge.”
The heroine of A Baron for Becky may be the toughest of the lot. Most of her choices were taken from her a few days after her 15th birthday. She has chosen to endure, and the main plot hinge of the book is the choice she makes about the best path for her and her children
“What do you want for your daughter, Mrs Darling?”
“A better life,” Rose said immediately, suddenly fierce. “A chance to be respectable. A life that does not depend on the whims of a man.”
“The first two may be achievable,” the duchess said, dryly. “The third is highly unlikely for any woman of any station. You expect my son to help you to these goals, I take it.”
Rose was suddenly tired of polite circling. “I was saving so that I could leave this life, start again in another place under another name. But my last protector cheated me and stole from me.
“I do what I must, Your Grace. Should I have killed myself when I was disgraced? I had no skills anyone wanted to buy. I could play the piano, a little; sew, but others were faster and better; paint, but indifferently; parse a Latin sentence, but of what use was that in my circumstances? Should I have starved in the gutter where they threw me?
“Well, I was not given that choice. Those who took me from the gutter knew precisely what I had that others would pay for. As soon as I could, I began selling it for myself, and I. Will. Not. Be. Ashamed.”
Romantic fiction is feminist because it is about choice.
Romantic fiction is also romantic by definition
I’ve heard one feminist critique of romantic fiction that flabbergasts me. Romantic fiction, they say, is anti-feminist because it teaches women to believe that happiness lies in a successful love affair.
Um. Excuse me? Read the label on the box, people. This. Is. Romance. A fictional account of a love affair with a happy ending. Criticising it for having a happy ending is like criticising a cornflakes packet for containing cornflakes.
Different genres have different conventions. In murder mysteries, the killer is always caught and brought to justice. Science fiction novels are predicated on technology that does not exist yet. Neither reflect reality, and readers do not believe that they do.
Do we stop reading thrillers because they teach people not to fight against injustice until the lone hero strolls into town, emotionally scarred and weather-beaten, to throw his exceptional skills into the cause and win against all the odds? Do we stop reading literary novels because they almost universally end unhappily, thus teaching people that happiness is not achievable?
That said, I see many plots that include secondary characters who are successfully single, and I’d like to see more. I have a personal ambition to write a book with a strong secondary plot where the heroine’s best friend decides against marriage because something else brings her more satisfaction. (Of course, in the time period I’m writing about, that means she decides against sex, and yes, people, it is possible.)
Reading romantic fiction is an affirmative action
No other genre attracts the same level of scorn as romantic fiction. Every writer has heard the derogatory names. Mommie-porn. Chick-lit. Bodice-ripper. Or The Sneer. And boy do we know The Sneer! So you write Mills and Boon? Sneer. Oh, like Fifty Shades of Grey? Sneer. Like Barbara Cartland? Sneer. Why three of the most financially successful brands in the history of publishing should attract a sneer is an interesting question.
Those particular brands are used as a dismissal, I suggest, because the speaker believes them to be of poor quality. I’m not going to comment on that, beyond saying that the genre is much much broader than the brands mentioned. Science fiction includes Star Wars rip-off fiction as well as the wonderful The Word for World is Forest. Romantic fiction includes pulp as well as the marvellous The Captive.
A genre is not a description of quality. It is just a convenient way of sorting books so that book sellers and libraries can give readers the type of story they want. Genre and literary novels come in good, bad, and indifferent—as most readers and writers nowadays know, with the exception of a few unregenerate literary snobs.
But somehow, it is still open season on romance. Why? When you look at the insulting labels, all of which call attention to the gender of the writers and readers, it is hard not to draw the conclusion that this unthinking dismissal of romance is an anti-feminist act, and challenging such bigotry is an affirmative action.
So read romantic fiction proudly. By doing so, you are supporting a writer who believes that women should have the same freedom as men to make choices.
Dr and Mrs Wren are delighted to welcome the wassailing party to this progressive Regency dinner.
We have something of a houseful at the moment. Many of the young students that Dr Wren tutors have stayed over in Oxford for our Christmas party, those of our children who live close enough have come home for to celebrate the holiday, bringing their own children, and we have other guests, too, including Mrs Wren’s niece, Mary Pritchard, the two men who are courting her, and the girl who is chasing after one of the men.
This should make the party very entertaining! Come in, join us in a Christmas Carol, catch the person of your choice under the kissing bough, and enjoy the food and drink.
To win a print copy of Farewell to Kindness, with a bookplate signed by all the Belles, plus assorted Belles swag, comment below with an answer to the question. I’ll draw one commenter at random, and prizewinners will be announced at the end of the progressive dinner.
How many novellas are in the Bluestocking Belles’ holiday box set?
Mary Pritchard, her suitors, and Dr and Mrs Wren, are characters in Gingerbread Bride, a novella in Mistletoe, Marriage, and Mayhem
Mary Pritchard
Rick Redepenning
Stranded ashore by injury, naval lieutenant Rick Redepenning rescues Mary Pritchard when she runs into villains. Familiar territory. He has been rescuing his admiral’s daughter since they were both children. The child has become a lovely woman, but she seems oblivious to his interest. Can Rick catch his runaway bride in time for Christmas?
Mary Pritchard is cast on the perilous shoals of London Society by her admiral father’s death. Her loathsome cousin thinks to win her hand and fortune. Mary runs. She has other aunts, and won’t settle for a loveless marriage in place of her dreams. But the hero of those dreams, her girlhood rescuer, couldn’t be interested. Could he?
“Mary, my love,” Mrs Wren says, bring out the wassail. The carolers will be thirsty after that wonderful song.”
“Of course, Aunt Theo.” But Lieutenant Redepenning is before Mary to the bowl. “Here, Miss Pritchard, let me carry that. It is heavy. You bring the cups.”
“I can carry the bowl for Miss Pritchard,” says Viscount Bosville, puffing out his chest.
Mary frowns at them both. “You carry the bowl,” she says to Lieutenant Redepenning, and then hands the cups to Bosville. “There. You carry the cups.” With a cheeky grin, she walks off and leaves them glaring at one another.
How to Make Fireside Wassail VIDEO. An Easy and Tasty Christmas Drink Recipe
Excerpt from Gingerbread Bride
She was everywhere, always busy, always in company. More of the Wren offspring arrived, with spouses and children, all delighted to meet Mary, the cousin whose letters from far-flung places had enlivened their lives for many years. She was in demand in the kitchen, where she was making and icing gingerbread shapes for the party supper. She was involved in the last of the decorating.
He gave up, and decided to move his baggage to the inn where he was booked for the night.
“Rick? Are you leaving?” Mary. She stopped in the parlor doorway.
“I’ll be back for the party, Mary, but I’ll leave from the inn in the morning. My father expects me in London tomorrow night. Mary? Will you walk into Oxford with me?”
Just then, Mrs. Wren and two of her daughters came down the stairs.
“Mary, dear, would you help with the kissing bough in the garden? Lieutenant Redepenning, you’re off to the inn? What time do you expect to be back, dear?”
Rick gave some kind of an answer, watching Mary slip away from him again, carried off by her cousins.
Tonight. At some point tonight, he would find her alone, if he had to carry her off into a dark corner of the garden across the dead bodies of all her relatives.
“Another cup of wassail?” Dr Wren asks, beaming.
“Now, Husband,” says Mrs Wren, “they have many more stops to go before the end of the dinner, and wassail at each house, I have not a doubt.” She looks straight at you as she says, “We are serving soup in the dining room as the first course of this meal you have embarked upon. Please, come and join us in a bowl.”
Dr Wren winks. “Not precisely in the bowl, you understand. It would be a little cramped.”
Regency white soup
Recipe from: John Farley’s London Art of Cooking (1783)
Put a knuckle of veal into six quarts of water, with a large fowl, and a pound of lean bacon, half a pound of rice, two anchovies, a few pepper corns, a bundle of sweet herbs*, two or three onions, and three or four heads of celery cut in slices**. Stew them all together, till the soup be as strong as you would have it+, and then strain it through a hair sieve into a clean earthen pot. Having let it stand all night, the next day take off the scum, and pour it clean off into a tossing-pan. Put in half a pound of Jordan almonds beat fine, boil it a little, and run it through a lawn [fine cloth] sieve. Then put in a pint of cream, and the yolk of an egg, and send it up hot.
“Perhaps a little mug of posset to keep the chill from their bones before the next stop?” Dr Wren suggests to Mrs Wren, who relents now that our stomachs are well lined with soup.
“Mary, my love, fetch the posset, if you will.”
Mary is heard to mutter as she leaves the room, “If Viscount Bosville has not consumed the lot.”
But she returns a few moments later carrying mugs and a ladle, and followed by Rick Redepenning with a large cauldron from which fragrant smells are wafting.
“Here,” says Rick cheerfully. “This will keep you warm on your way.”
Recipe from: the posthumously published book, The Closet of the Eminently Learned Kenelm Digby Knight (London: 1670) (Please see link for an in-depth discussion of the recipe)
Take a pottle of Cream, and boil in it a little whole Cinnamon, and three or four flakes of Mace. To this proportion of Cream put in eighteen yolks of eggs, and eight of the whites; a pint of Sack; beat your eggs very well, and then mingle them with your Sack. Put in three quarters of a pound of Sugar into the Wine and Eggs, with a Nutmeg grated, and a little beaten Cinnamon; set the Bason on the fire with the Wine and Eggs, and let it be hot. Then put in the Cream boiling from the fire, pour it on high, but stir it not; cover it with a dish, and when it is settlede, strew on the top a little fine Sugar mingled with three grains of Ambergreece, and one grain of Musk, and serve it up.
Mistletoe, Marriage, and Mayhem: A Bluestocking Belles Collection
In this collection of novellas, the Bluestocking Belles bring you seven runaway Regency brides resisting and romancing their holiday heroes under the mistletoe. Whether scampering away or dashing toward their destinies, avoiding a rogue or chasing after a scoundrel, these ladies and their gentlemen leave miles of mayhem behind them on the slippery road to a happy-ever-after.
This is only the first stop in the Belles’ holiday wassailing blog tour, with a different Regency era Christmas carol, dinner selection, and beverage, and wassail recipes at every stop that you can make in the modern kitchen. Keep checking back, and I will add the links to the stops as they become available.
4 Dec: Jude Knight: The First Course, Regency White Soup
A 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.
Misunderstandings 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.”
One 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 inMistletoe, Marriage, and Mayhem).
The 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.
I 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.
I’ve sent the last story of Hand-Turned Tales off to the beta readers, and received the first feedback, which gives me sufficient confidence to finally announce a date!
My new permafree sampler book (three short stories and a novella), Hand-Turned Tales will be published as an ebook on 16 December, and as a print book with a price set for cost recovery as soon after as can be managed. Click on the link above to read about the four stories.
Meanwhile, I’ve been working on another made-to-order story, written for the winner of the Cat Day giveaway. She wanted a wounded or disabled hero, a pretty heroine, and arranged marriage, and a cat named Angel. Here’s how it starts:
Magnus and the Christmas Angel
Imp was not in the house. She had not been accidentally shut in the cellars or the attic or any of the dozen unused bedrooms, frozen in a state of readiness for guests who never came.
The children of the Fenchurch Abbey estate had searched high and low, and brought a score of cats for Callie to inspect, hoping to win the reward.
None of them were Imp.
She was not in the stables, or the dairy, or any of the sheds or other outbuildings. Callie had questioned all the servants who had cottages near the main house, and none of them had somehow acquired an elegant, imperious, elderly, and very pregnant black cat.
Or not so pregnant now. Imp had gone missing four weeks ago. Somewhere, she had nested and produced her litter. Somewhere—and half an hour ago, Callie had suddenly had an idea about where. They had not lived at Blessings for more than a year, and Imp had birthed two litters since then, her latest at Fenchurch Abbey (in Magnus’s dressing room on his cravats). But perhaps she had returned to the place that had been home for most of her life?
Callie shivered, and pulled her shawl further forward over her head. She had run impetuously from the house without first checking the weather, and without telling her maid where she was going, thinking she would not be long.
The clouds had looked ominous, but her childhood home was only a brisk walk away; she could be there, find her cat, and be back well before dark. She was not a fool. She wore a rain cape, and it never snowed this far south as early as Christmas Eve. Except, it seemed, this year.
Perhaps it would remain a few stray flakes, melting before they reached the ground, but the sky was black and heavy, and she feared she would not make it back to Fenchurch Abbey before the snow began in earnest.
The servants would fret if she stayed at Blessings overnight. Magnus would neither know nor care. He had spent more time in London than at the Abbey since their wedding. Proving his identity so he could take up his title, he said. This was true, but avoiding his unwanted wife was doubtless also on his list of reasons.
Since 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!)
