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Spotlight on Fire & Frost

 

I’m thrilled to be able to tell you about the Belles’ next box set, Fire & Frost. We revealed the cover yesterday, and within a week the final versions of our stories are due to the editors. It is released on 4 February 2020, but the gestation of a box set is a long process. We started in February this year. My story is called Melting Matilda and it’s a novella associated with the Children of the Mountain King series.

Fire & Frost

Join the The Ladies’ Society For The Care of the Widows and Orphans of Fallen Heroes and the Children of Wounded Veterans in their pursuit of justice, charity, and soul searing romance.

The Napoleonic Wars have left England with wounded warriors, fatherless children, unemployed veterans, and hungry families. The ladies of London, led by the indomitable Duchess of Haverford plot a campaign to feed the hungry, care for the fallen—and bring the neglectful Parliament to heel. They will use any means at their disposal to convince the gentlemen of their choice to assist.

Their campaign involves strategy, persuasion, and a wee bit of fun. Pamphlets are all well and good, but auctioning a lady’s company along with her basket of delicious treats is bound to get more attention. Their efforts fall amid weeks of fog and weather so cold the Thames freezes over and a festive Frost Fair breaks out right on the river. The ladies take to the ice. What could be better for their purposes than a little Fire and Frost?

Her scandalous birth prevents Matilda Grenford from being fully acceptable to Society, even though she has been a ward of the Duchess of Haverford since she was a few weeks old. Her half-brother, the Marquis of Aldridge, is convinced she will one day be wooed by a worthy gentleman, but Matilda has no such expectations. The only man who has ever interested her gave her an outrageous kiss a year ago and has avoided her ever since.

Charles, the Earl of Hamner is honour bound to ignore his attraction to Matilda Grenford. She is an innocent and a lady, and in every way worthy of his respect—but she is base-born. His ancestors would rise screaming from their graves if he made her his countess.

When his mother and her guardian begin collaborating on Her Grace’s annual charity fundraiser, neither Charles nor Matilda sees a way to avoid working together. And neither can forget the kiss they once shared.

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Introductions in WIP Wednesday

We want to meet the main characters in the story early on. We want to know a bit about them, and we want to get a sense of whether they’re likeable (the protagonists) or potentially villainous. But we don’t want to be overwhelmed with backstory. Today, I’m asking you to share a few paragraphs from when one of your main characters appears in your story. Mine is my heroine from The Darkness Within, one of my current projects.

Serenity Witness would be Chosen in the next ballot. This was not a matter of faith, it was an inevitable fact, since she was the last of the current crop of brides. Hers would be the only lot in the golden chalice that was used at the ceremony. Even though the girls two years younger had been moved into the bride house after the Winter Solstice, it was only so that the Spring and Summer brides would not be alone, and the Spring bride had been Chosen just over two months ago. Her turn would end four weeks and a day from now.

The younger girls were all tremendously excited about the ballot ceremony tomorrow, but mostly because, in three months, their lots would be added to the chalice, and one of them would be chosen as Autumn bride. They assumed Serenity was even more enthusiastic, and she did nothing to dissuade them.

She should be delighted, of course. She was way past the age when most Witness girls entered adulthood.

The Powers had passed her by the first year she was eligible, when she was just sixteen. Seven females shared her birth year, and three were still unchosen from the year before. In the second year, she was left again. In the third year, the four girls a year younger were added, and that year, Serenity was Chosen, but between the ballot and the wedding, she contracted smallpox and nearly died.

By the time she recovered, another had taken her place, for the vitality of the community depended on the Chosen bride, and the position could not be left vacant.

Her smallpox scars did not matter, the Incarnate One assured her. The Powers saw beyond the surface, to the beautiful soul within. Still, they passed her by in the next ballot, and the next, until here she was, nearly twenty years of age and still a maiden bride.

Sitting in the little chapel of the bride house, she faced the Powers and confessed what they, who knew all, must already see within her. “I am afraid.”

At sixteen, she would have been thrilled. Even at eighteen months ago, had she not contracted the smallpox, she would have been nervous about being the centre of attention, concerned about failing in her duties, but deeply content to step over the threshold that marked the separation between girl and woman.

“I am afraid,” she repeated. “I doubt, even though I know that I should not. Take away my doubt, dear Powers.” Every one said that to be Chosen was the greatest of all privileges, and that the three months the Chosen spent as Goddess Incarnate filled her with a joy that would last the remainder of her life. But ever since her friend Verity was tempted from the path by the acolyte called Paul, Serenity had been unable to keep the questions from her mind.

Paul had moved on a few days before Verity became Goddess Incarnate and Verity had served her appointed term, but Serenity had seen the sadness in her eyes when she stepped down from beside the One after the Goddess moved to the next Chosen. A few weeks after she entered the wives’ house, she had died suddenly—an accident with a knife, the community was told. But Serenity had doubted, and the doubts multiplied as she began to notice other signs of secret distress amongst the wives.

“Take away my doubts,” she prayed, but the calm certainty she sought evaded her.

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If we only had time

Daylight saving started in New Zealand in the early hours of Sunday morning, which led to a conversation in the work kitchen this morning about time.

Time is a construct, said the engineer among us, given importance by trains. He then whisked out of the room with his coffee, leaving the rest of us to discuss the concept.

He is, of course, quite correct. Once, everywhere in the known world took its time from the sun (translated into candle time or water time, but the reference point was the sun, as translated through some form of sun dial).

In fact, that’s still true today, since all the timekeeping in the English-speaking world relates back to Greenwich Mean Time, which is calculated from solar time — in fact, average solar midnight at Greenwich. (There’s a whole lot more history, but that’s enough for now.)

The thing is, up until the invention of railways, solar time was good enough. Even though clock technology improved, a clock was only as accurate as its reference point. Every village, every ship at sea, every point East to West across the map, calculated its own solar time. You could travel from the East of Kent to the West of Ireland, and have to put your watch back an hour.

Since the whole trip would take a couple of weeks, what did it matter? A few minutes between overnight stops made very little difference.

Then came the railways.

All of a sudden, exact times mattered. Not only were people travelling at four times the speed — and for longer each day; those controlling the railways needed to know when trains were going to be where, and know it precisely. It was a matter of life or death.

Here’s a fascinating map that shows how far out from solar time various parts of each time zone are. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2572317/Are-YOU-living-sync-Amazing-map-reveals-manmade-timezones-countries-false-sense-sun-rises.html

You’ll see that in China, where all clocks are set to Beijing time, solar noon takes place at 3pm in the far west of the country.

On a related point, we think of a moment as a very brief fraction of time. This reflects our business, perhaps, because — for our ancestors — a moment was longer than a minute. How long? It depends. The word comes from a Latin root meaning movement, and the movement in question was that of a shadow on a sundial. A moment was the time it took the shadow to move between the two smallest marks. With 40 marks to an hour, at the equinoxes, a moment was 90 seconds in our time. A moment was longer in the summer, and shorter in the winter — something to tell your kids when you ask them to wait just a moment.

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Religions and revival in Georgian England

Shakers worshipped in dance

I’ve been reading up about dissenters, pantheists, cults, and other non-traditional religionists in the 18th and early 19th century. In religion, as in society as a whole, it was a time of ferment. New ideas and new ways of doing things led to (and came out of) the industrial revolution, the French and American revolutions, revolutions in the approaches to scientific inquiry, artistic expression, fashion, farming, architecture, and all kinds of other aspects of human society. How people worshipped was part of, and in part fuelled, that change.

Some writers make the direct link. It was those driven from France into the Lowlands after the Edict of Nantes (Lutherans, Catholics, Jews, and members of other persecuted sects) that, thrown together in exile, began to question conventional social mores.

Their heretical opinions about orthodox Christianity led some of them into the extremes of Puritanism, and others to deny all labels. ” I am not Lutheran, Calvinist, Arminian, Socinian, Anabaptist, or Quaker,” says book factor, Prosper Marchand, one of the voices in that place and time. He avowed a Christianity with no organised church and no official doctrine, and this in 1712. From such radical thinking, itself fuelled by Renaissance humanism, came the Enlightenment, as well as Hellfire clubs, messianic cults, poetic pantheism, and the Great Awakening, with its new forms of established religion such as Methodism. These, in time, led to the reform of those institutions that had triggered the change.

Millenialism was a strong strain in the American Revolution. Victory over the British showed that God favoured America, and those with millenialist leanings became convinced that it was in the United States that Christ would reign for 1000 years. Even the French revolution had religious roots, with the diaspora mentioned above strongly shaping the politics of the revolutionaries. Some argue that the industrial revolution, likewise, was a consequence of religious thinking.

Religions influenced by dualistic philosophies view the material world with suspicion and hostility. The material world is considered evil, while the spiritual world is considered good and noble. Renouncing this world became the mark of holiness. Equally detrimental to the development of science were world views that did not have a concept of a supreme personal Creator God. Some of the ancient civilizations, for example, which did develop some mathematics and technologies, did not develop general scientific theories, because of the absence of a creationist perspective that gives confidence in the existence of rational laws in nature. This clearly explains the lack of interest on the part of these cultures in scientific research and technology. It also shows how the Reformation, with its return to Biblical Christianity, spurred a phenomenal interest in fundamental research and technology. The great scientific advances and the industrial revolution that followed bear this out. (Institute for Christian Research)

The abolition of slavery, wide-spread education, broadening of the suffrage, workers rights — all of these 19th century innovations were championed by those who inherited the Great Awakening; that is, by the intellectual and spiritual children of those religious exiles.

In my book The Darkness Within, my hero’s investigation into a disappearance leads him into a pantheist cult. 

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Secondary Characters on WIP Wednesday

I tend to have quite a cast of secondary characters, and to fall in love with them and want to know more. Other characters manage to be far more disciplined. How about you? Are your supporting cast just there to provide an ear (or a knife) at the appropriate time? Or do they insist on developing personalities and threatening to take over?

Give me an excerpt with a secondary character! I’ll show you one of mine. This is the Earl of Hythe in conversation with his older sister, the heroine of To Wed a Proper Lady. Hythe has a mania for tidiness which Sophia uses in this scene.

As soon as Sophia entered the house, Pinchbeck said, “Lord Hythe has arrived, my lady, and asks that you attend him in his study as soon as you return.”

“Very well,” Sophia agreed. “Tell my brother that I will be with him shortly. I will just go up to my room to wash.” London’s air and its filthy streets always left her feeling grimy.

The butler shuffled, but did not remove himself from her path. “Urgently, my lady, his lordship said.” His tone was apologetic, but uncompromising.

Sophia wondered what could possibly be so urgent. Hythe was not usually so peremptory. She handed her maid her bonnet, gloves, and pelisse. “Very well. Theodosia, take these up to my room, please, and begin to prepare for my next change. Lay out the green dinner gown with the deep flounce.”

The butler was leaving, his message delivered. “Pinchbeck, order tea and refreshments to Hythe’s study, please. Also, a bowl of hot water, soap, wash cloth, and towel. If Hythe wishes me to come to him directly, then he can watch my ablutions.”

“Yes, my lady.”

Sophia knocked and opened the door, catching Hythe with his boots on his desk, leaning back in his chair with his eyes shut. He swung his legs down and stood. “Sophia. Good. I wanted to talk to you.”

“So I understood from Pinchbeck. Immediately, he said. Without an opportunity to wash or tidy my hair.”

Hythe flushed. “I did not demand that you come as soon as you walked in the door. Old Pinchy exceeds his commission.”

“He misunderstood, then.” Sophia rolled her sleeves back, ready for her wash. “I was certain, my dear, that you would not be so discourteous.”

“Of course not.” Hythe was blushing still more, his eyes turned away from his sister’s scandalously exposed arms. “I only told him I wished to speak to you as soon as possible. When you returned, I said.”

“I collect that you told him it was urgent. You may be pleased, Hythe, that your butler is so eager to obey you.” While inconveniencing and potentially offending the woman who had been mistress of this house in the ten years since her mother died. The servants saw as clearly as Sophia did that her reign would end when Hythe took a wife.

“It can wait if you wish to…”

Hythe trailed off when a footman came in with a bowl of water, followed by Sophia’s maid Theodosia, carrying a towel, wash cloth, and soap.

“Not at all, Hythe. I have taken the liberty of sending for what I required.”

She sat on the sofa, and gestured to the footman to put the bowl on the table in front of her. Hythe, who hated anything out of order, looked at the arrangement with horror. To distract him, she asked Hythe, “Have you had a pleasant trip?” They conversed while she swiftly washed her face and then her hands. He had been to their estate in Sussex — to escape the social round, as she well knew, though he had clearly used the time to good effect, as he shared with her the decisions he’d made with his land steward while he was there.

Another pair of maids arrived with the tea service and a tray of tidbits. Sophia nodded to the footman to remove the bowl, and Theodosia took the towel Sophia handed her and wiped the table with it before the others put down their trays in front of Sophia.

Hythe paled at the misuse of the towel. Poor Hythe. It had been unkind of her to show her pique at his order by disrupting his study in this way.

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Disastrous error!

Go on. Ask me. Which part of ‘never do stuff while you’re tired and distracted’ didn’t I follow?

I’ve just accidentally cancelled the pre-order of Unkept Promises on Amazon. I knew straight away that my fingers had just betrayed me, but it was too late. No ‘are you sure’. Just gone. Locked. Can’t get in. And the ominous message in my email inbox:

Dear KDP author,

The pre-order for your book Unkept Promises has been canceled. Customers have been notified that it was canceled because you have decided not to publish your book. Also, you have lost pre-order access for one year.

For more details about Pre-orders, check out this page.

Best Regards,

Kindle Direct Publishing Team

I’ve sent a tearful begging message to Kindle Direct Publishing. Can I recover from this disaster? Meanwhile, the ads are going out, and the book isn’t.

And my preorders! All the people who expect the book in less than 36 hours! And the reviewers who are waiting to jump in. I feel sick. I might just go and crawl into a hole and pull a blanket over my head.

UPDATE: I’ve talked to Amazon, and they can’t reinstate. I’ve just republished. It’s in the queue to be reviewed. I’ll put up new links as soon as I have them. Meanwhile, you can still buy from Kobo, Apple, Nook or Smashwords — links here https://books2read.com/Unkept-Promises

Or at my bookstore, where it is 99c and available now. https://judeknight.selz.com/item/unkept-promises

UPDATED UPDATE: Fixed, and a new Books2Read link made with the new Amazon information.

 

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Let’s hang out at the mall

The second royal exchange

Did you know that the first English mall was opened in 1571? Merchant Thomas Gresham, who lived in Antwerp, followed the Bourse shopping exchange in Antwerp as his model. The idea was an arcaded building housing small shops, surrounding a small courtyard for trading. With royal approval from Elizabeth 1, the mall soon became a magnet for merchants and shoppers. Idlers, too, much like the malls of today.

In the Inquest Book of Cornhill Ward, 1574 (says Mr. Burgon), there is a presentment against the Exchange, because on Sundays and holidays great numbers of boys, children, and “young rogues,” meet there, and shout and holloa, so that honest citizens cannot quietly walk there for their recreation, and the parishioners of St. Bartholomew could not hear the sermon. In 1590 we find certain women prosecuted for selling apples and oranges at the Exchange gate in Cornhill, and “amusing themselves in cursing and swearing, to the great annoyance and grief of the inhabitants and passers-by.” In 1592 a tavern-keeper, who had vaults under the Exchange, was fined for allowing tippling, and for broiling herrings, sprats, and bacon, to the vexation of worshipful merchants resorting to the Exchange. In 1602 we find that oranges and lemons were allowed to be sold at the gates and passages of the Exchange. In 1622 complaint was made of the rat-catchers, and sellers of dogs, birds, plants, &c., who hung about the south gate of the Bourse, especially at exchange time. It was also seriously complained of that the bear-wards, Shakespeare’s noisy neighbours in Southwark, before special bull or bear baitings, used to parade before the Exchange, generally in business hours, and there make proclamation of their entertainments, which caused tumult, and drew together mobs. It was usual on these occasions to have a monkey riding on the bear’s back, and several discordant minstrels fiddling, to give additional publicity to the coming festival. (https://www.british-history.ac.uk/old-new-london/vol1/pp494-513)

The Royal Exchange is still on the same site today, though the buildings have twice been destroyed by fire and rebuilt.

After the Great Fire of London, the place was built in nearly a rectangular quadrangle. The philosopher Joseph Addison says:

“There is no place in the town,” says that rambling philosopher, Addison, “which I so much love to frequent as the Royal Exchange. It gives me a secret satisfaction, and in some measure gratifies my vanity, as I am an Englishman, to see so rich an assembly of countrymen and foreigners consulting together upon the private business of mankind, and making this metropolis a kind of emporium for the whole earth. I must confess I look upon High ‘Change to be a great council in which all considerable nations have their representatives. Factors in the trading world are what ambassadors are in the politic world; they negociate affairs, conclude treaties, and maintain a good correspondence between those wealthy societies of men that are divided from one another by seas and oceans, or live on the different extremities of a continent. I have often been pleased to hear disputes adjusted between an inhabitant of Japan and an alderman of London; or to see a subject of the great Mogul entering into a league with one of the Czar of Muscovy. I am infinitely delighted in mixing with these several ministers of commerce, as they are distinguished by their different walks and different languages. Sometimes I am jostled among a body of Armenians; sometimes I am lost in a crowd of Jews; and sometimes make one in a group of Dutchmen. I am a Dane, Swede, or Frenchman at different times; or rather, fancy myself like the old philosopher, who, upon being asked what countryman he was, replied that he was a citizen of the world.”

This was the Royal Exchange of the Regency. The outside shops were lottery offices, newspaper offices, watchmakers, notaries, stock-brokers, and so on. The shops in the galleries were superseded by the Royal Exchange Assurance Offices, Lloyd’s Coffee-house, the Merchant Seamen’s Offices, the Gresham Lecture Room, and the Lord Mayor’s Court Offic, with its row of offices, divided by glazed partitions, the name of each attorney on a projecting board. The vaults were let to bankers, and to the East India Company. They stored pepper there.

This building burned down in 1838. Today’s building has the layout of the original — a trapezoid-shaped building , with rooms all around the outside on the ground floor that let on to a wide internal corridor open to a central courtyard. The upper level is also given over to rooms and corridors.

The Royal Exchange today

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Attraction on WIP Wednesday

 

If our story includes a romance, it includes attraction. (Sometimes, it includes attraction even without a romance!) This week, I’m sharing another bit from The Gingerbread Caper, and I’d love for you to share an extract of yours in the comments.

She joined him at the table. “It’s our quiet time, and I was about to stop for a cup of tea myself.” She offered him a plate with pieces of gingerbread cookie and a slightly flattened cupcake. “Milk?”

“A little bit, please and no sugar.” Her physical impact wasn’t lessened by her proximity. He’d been imagining a middle-aged, perhaps even an elderly woman. Someone with white curly hair, comfortably rounded, grandmotherly. Someone he could look at without wanting to fall at her feet, his tongue hanging out.

“You’re Patrick Finch, aren’t you?” she asked, and when he assured her that he was indeed, she opened her eyes very wide, her eyebrows shooting up. “I thought you would be much older.” She tossed ahead, clucking her tongue. “I said that out loud, didn’t I?”

“Ms Fotheringham–” Patrick began. She interrupted him. “You had better call me Meg.”

He said his own name, managing to manipulate the aforementioned tongue into the familiar syllables. The question he had been about to ask had to drained from his brain, and receded still further when those lovely eyes — brown with flecks of green — stayed focused on him, a question in their depths.

Before he could compose himself sufficiently to continue, she saved him the trouble. “I should explain that I am not my aunt.” She successfully interpreted the rapid blink with which she greeted this mystifying statement. “My Aunt Margaret owns this bakery and the flats upstairs. She was called away quite unexpectedly, and I am looking after the place for her. There wasn’t time to let you know, and I don’t suppose it makes a difference anyway, as far as you are concerned. In a minute I will show you your flat and leave you to get settled. As Aunt Margaret told you, your meals will be served down here in the tea rooms. Your rent includes all three meals, and morning and afternoon tea.”

Patrick sat there nodding, when what he really wanted to do was shake his head. This was a disaster. He had been sent out of town to convalesce — his doctor and his manager both insisting that if he stayed home he would not be able to resist working. Absolutely no stress, the doctor had said. He had been looking forward to a little mothering from the comfortable elderly lady he had expected. Instead, he was confronted by the finest example he had ever seen of that section of humanity that tied his tongue in knots and turned his feet into weapons of self-destruction.

A young woman. A lovely young woman. “I would like to lie down now,” he told her. His errant imagination, functioning with far greater facility than the rest of him, immediately presented a picture of Meg waiting for him in bed. Scarlet sheets set off her lovely complexion.

“Of course.” The real Meg stood immediately. “Aunt said you have been ill, and it is a long trip from Wellington. What do you do there, Patrick?”

“Senior policy analyst,” he said, shortly. She opened her eyes, wide. “Who for? What do you do?”

“It doesn’t matter.” It wasn’t a secret, but his head was both pounding and attempting to drift around the room. She must have sensed his need, because she dropped the questioning.

“Come this way. Here! Let me take one of those.” She picked up the heaviest of his two suitcases and led the way.

Patrick stumbled after her with the second suitcase, hoping his blush would be gone before she looked at him again, or at the very least she did not guess the thoughts that so embarrassed him. Lust is perfectly normal, he assured himself. As long as you don’t dwell on it or insult the young woman, all shall be well. You have several good books. You can go for long walks.

A door at the front of the shop gave on to a small hall and a bank of stairs. Meg led the way up, which put her jeans-clad behind directly at Patrick’s eyelevel.

I wonder if she has a boyfriend? He shook his head. Of course she does. A woman like this? Don’t be more of an idiot than you can help, Patrick.

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Published, in progress and planned books, mapped by series and connection

The image above shows my published books (black), those I’m currently writing (blue) and those I intend to write soon (red). If it’s shorter than a novel, I’ve put (novella) or (short story). A yellow container holds a series, with connected stories (those that are not part of the series but that include characters who’ve appeared in the series) out to the side and connected by a line. I have also marked my five mobile characters with a penciled line and the character’s names in green.

The plan is to complete The Darkness Within, then finish The Children of the Mountain King series before I start anything else. That’s about 300,000 words to write, so maybe ten month’s work. Since I like to publish a Redepenning book a year, I’m hoping it’ll be quicker. I’m looking forward to writing The Flavour of Our Deeds, next in The Golden Redepennings. Lucas Mogg, Kitty’s amour and Rede’s gamekeeper, is hiding a secret. I’m dying to tell you what it is, but we’ll all have to wait.