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Happy birthday to my blog

book-cake1Tomorrow will be one year to the day since my first blog post on this site. I had written half of the first draft of Farewell to Kindness, had just been to my first Romance Writers of New Zealand conference, and had tentatively told friends, family, and colleagues that I planned to be published soon.

Tomorrow is nine months since Candle’s Christmas Chair, my first published work, went live on Amazon and Smashwords. I wrote this novella while Farewell to Kindness was with the beta readers, to tell the story of two people who make a brief appearance in Farewell. In nine months, over 58,000 copies have been downloaded.

And tomorrow is six months since the launch of the Bluestocking Belles, eight very different writers united by a love of history and a history of writing about love. Whatever story you desire: sweet to steamy, from light-hearted fun to dark tortured tales full of angst, from London ballrooms to country cottages to oriental slums, one or more of us is sure to have a tale to suit your tastes and mood.

The Bluestocking Belles have some great birthday fun planned, so look for us on our blog, Facebook, and Twitter.

It has been quite a year.

I’ve published two novels, a novella, and some short stories. I’ve written 258 blog posts for this blog, and probably another 100 for other people. I’ve written a novella that is currently on prerelease as part of the Bluestocking Belles first box set, Mistletoe, Marriage, and Mayhem, I’m half of the way through another novel, and nearly finished the first draft of a set of short stories that will come out before Christmas.

I’m a regular contributor to the fictional spaces Bluestocking Bookshop and the Belle’s Teatime Tattler, and a happy member of 10 Minute Novelists, Marketing For Romance Writers, and Writing Wenches. And I’ve not long got back from my second Romance Writers of New Zealand conference, where I won the Great Beginnings Award for the first 6,000 words of Farewell to Kindness.

A discount to say thank you

And to thank you for coming with me on the ride, I’d like to give you access to some discounts. Until 22 September, you can pick up Farewell to Kindness and A Baron for Becky from Smashwords for only US$2.

Just follow the links, select ‘buy’ and use the code on the buy page. While you’re there, collect Candle’s Christmas Chair while it is still free, and buy Mistletoe, Marriage, and Mayhem for the prerelease price of US99c.

That makes two novels and 8 novellas for only US$5! Close to 1150 pages of reading.

Farewell to Kindness $2 with the code CS44Q

A Baron for Becky $2 with the code DC74X

Candle’s Christmas Chair permafree until December

Mistletoe, Marriage, and Mayhem 99c until release on 1 November.

 

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Belle Brezing on Wanton Weekends

300px-Belle_Brezing_in_a_feather_hat_(circa_1895)I’ve another poet for you this weekend.

Belle Brezing is supposed to have been the inspiration for the character Madame Belle in Gone with the Wind. Born in 1860, raised by a drunken, violent mother and a series of stepfathers, she was seduced at 12, pregnant at 15 and married shortly after. Her husband left town after the murder of one of her two other lovers, and before the birth of her daughter.

At 19, Belle became a resident at a ‘bawdy house’, and so excelled in her new career that she started her own enterprise two years later.

She went on to open bigger and better houses until, in 1891, she opened her last and greatest.

In the book ‘Madame Belle: Sex, Money, and Influence in a Southern Brothel’, Maryjean Wall describes the opening night.

“Megowan Street had never seen commotion like Belle’s opening night in 1891. All varieties of horse-drawn vehicles pulled up in front of no. 59, dropping off male passengers wearing formal evening dress. Drivers shouted to their horses. Cabs departed as quickly as they had arrived, the drivers turning their horses sharply back toward the Phoenix Hotel to pick up more fares. In the trickle-down effect the evening had on the local economy, hack drivers made a small fortune in tips on this memorable night.

Belle Brezing's parlour“Belle had invited physicians, lawyers, judges, horsemen, businessmen, and bankers to this fete. Sweet orchestral strains poured into the street every time the door opened to admit another caller. She had hired musicians for her opening, foregoing her mechanical nickelodeon. Her staff had prepared an elegant buffet. Her bar served the finest wines and champagne.”

Belle was highly successful, though she was also indicted more than any other citizen of Lexington.

She continued to run houses for the sale of entertainment for the next 25 years, until all the houses of disrepute were closed during the first World War by order of the army. By the time they opened again, Belle’s long-time lover and her sister had both died, and she lived out her retirement as a recluse until her death in 1940.

Belle wrote this poem in her teens, perhaps before she was wed.

Kisses
Sitting tnight in my chamber, a school girl figure
and lonely, I kiss the end of my finger, that and that only.

Reveries rises from the smokey mouth. Memories linger surround
me. Boys that are married or single. Gather around me. School boys
in pantalets roumping, Boys that now are growing to be young lands,
Boys that kiked to be Kissed; and like to give kisses.

Kisses. I remember them: Those in the corner were fleetest:
Sweet were those won the Sly in the Dark were the sweetest.
Girls are tender and gentle. To woo was almost to win them.
They lips are good as ripe peaches, and cream for finger.
Girls are sometimes flirts, and coquettish; Now catch and Kiss if
you can sin: could I catch both – ah, wasent I a happy Girl.

Boys is pretty and blooming sweetly, yea sweetness over their rest!
Them I loved dearly and truely. Last and the best.

Writing by Belle Brezing, Lexington Ky

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Hero’s sidekick on WIP Wednesday

Mary Duchess of GloucesterI’m late getting up my work-in-progress Wednesday post. Because, life. I’ve been thinking about all the people who surround the hero and the heroine, and I thought I’d make today’s post about them. Please bring us seven to ten lines of your work-in-progress that focuses on a secondary character. If your hero doesn’t have a sidekick, how about your heroine? And if neither them has a close friend and confidante, pick a piece about another secondary character.

Here are seven sentences from A Baron for Becky about the Duchess of Haverford. Not a sidekick, exactly, but certainly a significant secondary character.

The duchess ignored them both to focus on Becky.

She insisted on Becky sitting beside her.

“Are you keeping well, my dear? Are you eating?”

“Yes, Your Grace.” Becky’s voice was so quiet Hugh had to lean forward to hear.

“You must eat several times a day, dear. More as the baby takes up more room…” she trailed off as Becky blushed scarlet. “And when do you expect the little one to arrive?”

“At Yuletide, Ma’am. Or perhaps early January.”

“What of sleep, Mrs Winstanley? Are you able to rest in the afternoons?” She turned to Hugh. “An afternoon rest is most efficacious for women who are increasing, Lord Overton. I will expect you to keep her in bed in the afternoon.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Hugh replied, blushing in his turn.

The Duchess silenced her sniggering son with a raised eyebrow.

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Yu Xuanji on Wanton Weekends

Today’s post is about a concubine turned courtesan turned nun, who was also a poet.

downloadYu Xuanji lived in Chang-an, a province of China, in the late Tang dynasty (9th Century western). At the age of 16, she became the concubine of an official named Li Yu. Li Yu’s primary wife couldn’t stand the younger woman, and Li You abandoned her. She returned to life as a courtesan before taking holy orders as a Daoist nun.

Ironically, respectable women had no need to be educated, but courtesans must keep their clients entertained, and we remember Yu Xuanji today for her poetry – around 50 of her poems survive today, a fraction of her probable output. She is also remembered for her death. She was accused of murdering her maid, jailed, tried, and executed.

Was she the ‘Wild woman’ of later literature? Or a woman who refused to be confined by the expectations of her society and paid the price for it?

From this distance, we can only judge her by her work. Here is one of her poems, believed to be about beautiful young women.

Selling the Last Peonies

Facing the wind makes us sigh
we know how many flowers fall

spring has come back again
and where have the fragrant longings gone?

who can afford these peonies?
their price is much too high

their arrogant aroma
even intimidates butterflies

flowers so deeply red
they must have been grown in a palace

leaves so darkly green
dust scarcely dares to settle there

if you wait till they’re transplanted
to the Imperial Gardens

then you, young lords, will find
you have no means to buy them.

 

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Danger in WIP Wednesday

Box setAt the cover reveal party for the Bluestocking Belle box set yesterday, we talked about heroines, and whether people preferred heroines to be rescued or to rescue themselves. Opinions varied, but it set me thinking about moments of danger. My novella for the box set is Gingerbread Bride, and my heroine is a strong-minded and determined young woman. Which doesn’t mean that she is always able to rescue herself!

So, for this week’s work-in-progress Wednesday, please post around seven lines that show your hero or heroine in a tight spot. The danger could be physical or emotional. You could show the rescue or just the crisis. You pick.

To kick us off, here’s mine. Mary is in a post chaise, the horses are bolting, and she has climbed out to see if she can stop them:

As she edged her way cautiously back to the door, a flash of movement behind the hedge to her left caught her eye. A rider? The hedge thickened again, and she couldn’t be sure. Another bounding lurch prompted her to move again, and she swung herself back inside to rejoin Polly—though not without a few extra bruises.

“The post boy is gone, and the horses are bolting,” Mary told Polly. “Stay in your corner and hold on tight. And pray that they run themselves out before we reach a bend in the road.”

Following her own advice meant she couldn’t see whether the glimpse she’d caught was a rider. Someone riding to their aid would be wonderful, but unlikely. Might as well wish for Rick to save her once again!

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Gabrielle d’Estrées on Wanton Weekends

gabrielledestresAnother highly successful mistress today, though she tragically died just before she was made a wife. Gabrielle d’Estrées was the mistress and beloved of Henry IV of France. She accompanied him during his campaigns, making sure he was well fed, doing his laundry, and acting as his secretary.

When their son was born, he legitimised the child and the text validated his mistress as ‘worthy of our friendship’. He also recognised and legitimised the other two children they had together, a daughter and a son.

And he made her a Duchess, duchesse de Beaufort.

Five years after the birth of their first child, Henry applied for an annulment and authority to remarry, and gave his mistress his coronation ring as a sign of his intentions. But before they could wed, Gabrielle died.

Henry gave her a funeral fit for a queen, and wrote: “the roots of love are dead within me and will never spring to life again”.

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WIP Wednesday

timthumbThis last week, I submitted my novella for the Bluestocking Belles’ Christmas anthology. It’s called Gingerbread Bride, and the anthology is Mistletoe, Marriage, and Mayhem.

To celebrate, I’m making Work-in-Progress Wednesday about food. Post seven to eight lines from your work-in-progress with some connection to food (or drink, if your characters don’t eat on stage).

Don’t forget to share on Twitter, Facebook, and your other social media. If you tag me, I’ll like!

Mary smiled with satisfaction as she placed the last of the little gingerbread ladies into the box.  In the four weeks she had been at Aunt Dorothy’s, she had learned a number of recipes, and helped with all kinds of baking, but the gingerbread biscuits, which she had learned from the cook on the Olympus, became her specialty…

Aunt Dorothy had round and star cutters, and cutters in the shape of various animals. When the alderman’s daughter asked for gingerbread ladies and gentlemen for her wedding breakfast, Mary had been delighted with the notion, and the cutters the tinker made to her pencil drawings worked very well.

The icing gave them clothes and features; a whole box of little gingerbread grooms, and a box of little gingerbread brides.

And please, do consider joining us for our cover reveal party next week. The @BellesInBlue have great parties!

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All the ladies (and some of the gents) love a soldier on Wanton Weekends

4a41c6f55a5934eb28ff8750912e8cd1When I was researching wanton women (and men) for my release party, I set out to write a post on London rent boys and the molly brothels of Georgian England. I will do that at some point, but I was distracted by a reference. Shiny fact, shiny fact… and there went I, chasing off at a tangent.

The research articles I found talked about the coffee houses and private rooms that provided a safe haven for those with same sex attraction to meet and socialise. A heavy on the door checked that only members and their guests could enter, keeping patrons safe from spies. And when acting on same sex attraction could attract the death penalty, such security was essential.

And here’s my shiny fact. One of the uses to which such safe havens were put, said several of my sources, was as a place to bring lovers hired for the night: rent boys, they said, and soldiers.

Well. Who could resist such a clue? Not I, certainly. A bit more investigation, and I found that quite a number of soldiers supplemented their income by hiring themselves out – a fact well known at the time. And yesterday I discovered a reference to a Victorian gentleman from Venice, and his soldier friend. The quote that follows is from Prostitution, an article by Judith Flanders.

A diary tells on one such meeting, its author an Englishman living in Venice, but visiting London in the late 1840s. He cruised regularly: ‘Fine. Tried my luck once more. I sat in the Park; but so shy that I cd make [illegible] nothing.’ ‘Fun & Folly…Saw J.B. We went up to Albany St.’ Later he filled in the scanty details of his meeting with ‘J.B.’, a trooper named Jack Brand: ‘I saw you in all your beauty, smiling as your gallant charger reared & pranced…And then in the [sentry] Box I spoke to you, & after Parade we met for five minutes, & you told me your name’ That evening, ‘at the Arch at Hyde Park Corner met my poor Boy,’ where they rented a room.[4] The story continued, a casual commercial pick-up transforming into a relationship. But after only a few months Brand died of cholera, leaving his grieving lover behind.

wirtembergian_troops_napoleonic_warsI became diverted into a discussion about uniforms. Were they so ornate, some researchers speculate, to appeal to women? Or to potential male patrons?

To my mind, the either/or nature of the question is not appealing. Maybe uniforms were flashy because armies are conservative institutions and uniforms harked back to a time when being a peacock in dress was a sign of wealth and power, not a subtle hint about sexual preferences.

However, by the Regency era, dress uniforms and court dress were the last bastion of extreme fashion for those who liked a surplus of flash and glitter.

So today’s post is dedicated to uniforms and those within them for whom a visit with a friend to a friendly coffee house may have been a useful way to earn an extra coin or two.

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WIP Wednesdays

I love how several authors offer an opportunity on their blogs for other authors to strut their stuff. Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, I figured I’d give it a go, so look for me to post a Work-In-Progress Wednesday every week. I’ll set a theme and show you one of mine, and you give me five to seven sentences in the comments.

This week, since it’s the first, how about first meetings? Don’t forget to share once you’re done!

Here’s mine, from the made-to-order story I’m writing for Mary Anne Landers.

As she turned the corner into Frederick Street, a particularly sharp gust skittered a broken branch across her path, tangling it into her skirts.

She stumbled, and would have landed in the mud if firm hands had not suddenly caught her. As it was, in putting out her hands 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 parcel 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.

The image is of Dunedin in the mid 1860s, the setting for my story.

Dunedin Farley's Arcade

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Phyrne of Athens on Wanton Weekends

For today’s courtesan, we’re stepping back 2,500 years, to the hetaera Phryne of classical Athens. The hetaerae were independent, educated and shrewd at a time that wives were kept confined and ignorant.

Phryne apparently tailored her fees to her client, charging very high prices to some, and giving herself to the philosopher Diogenes free of charge, because she admired his intellect.

She became so wealthy at her profession that she offered to rebuild the walls of Thebes after Alexander the Great destroyed them. Her only condition was that they be inscribed ‘Destroyed by Alexander, restored by Phryne the courtesan’. This was a step too far for the city government, however.

Öèôðîâàÿ ðåïðîäóêöèÿ íàõîäèòñÿ â èíòåðíåò-ìóçåå gallerix.ru

Öèôðîâàÿ ðåïðîäóêöèÿ íàõîäèòñÿ â èíòåðíåò-ìóçåå gallerix.ru

She ran afoul of her own city government — they did not like wealthy independent women. And they had their chance to put this one in her place when she stripped naked as an offering to the god Poseidon during a festival. She was put on trial for blasphemy, the punishment for which was death. Things were looking grim when her lawyer stripped off her gown. “How could a festival in honour of the gods be desecrated by beauty they themselves bestowed,” he said.

It worked. Rather than offend the goddess Aphrodite, the judges acquitted the courtesan, prompting this letter to her lawyer from one of her friends:

We courtesans are grateful to you, and each one of us is just as grateful as Phryne. The suit, to be sure…involved Phryne alone, but it meant danger for us all, for…if we…face prosecution for impiety, it’s better for us to have done with this way of living…you have not merely saved a good mistress for yourself, but have put the rest of us in a mood to reward you on her account.