This week, I thought you might like to see what goes into getting our heroines and heroes dressed.
First, the heroines:
And now for the heroes. This is from the movie about Beau Brummel. If you’re shy, don’t watch the beginning. (The shirt would have been put on over the head, with buttons only at the neck. But hey.)
Our heroes and heroines need a past, and in my kind of book, something about that past needs to still bother them.
I love stories where we get an early glimpse of this vulnerability, without lengthy backstory, then more and more comes out as the story unwinds. I was at a crime and thriller conference last weekend, and on a panel with Kirsten McKenzie, whose horror/crime story Painted does this to beautiful effect for both the horror and the crime plot threads. I didn’t finish the book until the trip home, and the others on the panel were all trying to discuss the history that motivated the key characters without giving away the key points. (Sorry, folks.)
Sometimes, readers of a series know at least some of what tears at the hero’s heart or the heroine’s, but we don’t know about the wounds of the other protagonist. Charles, in Caroline Warfield’s Children of Empire has kept his dignity despite his estranged wife’s lies and betrayals. We know this because those lies also hurt Charles’s cousins, each of whom stars in one of the previous two books. We learn more, and from Charles’s POV, but we also need to find out what drives Zambak to the other side of the world, where she and Charles will have to deal with their separate pasts as well as the budding Opium Wars, Zambak’s brother, a callous villain, and small-minded local society.
I could go on — in my favourite books, people all have pasts, and an important part of the story is them coming to terms with who they are because of that past.
This week, I’m asking you to share a passage where your characters share part of their past. It could be highly significant, like the books I’ve mentioned above, or it could be something quite minor. Mine is from To Win a Proper Lady: The Bluestocking and the Barbarian, which I’m rewriting as a novellisation of the novella I wrote for Holly and Hopeful Hearts. In this passage, I hint at a backstory that won’t become clear until book three of the series. Hint. The heroine of To Tame the Wicked Rake: The Saint and the Sinner, is Charlotte Winderfield. The hero is Aldridge.
Charlotte indicated the closed bedchamber door with an inclination of her head. “I take it Grandfather has heard that the Duke of Haverford has run mad,” she said.
“Mad like a fox,” James answered. “He has given up on the claim that my father is not the son His Grace of Winshire lost so many years ago. With our esteemed progenitor and Aunt Georgie both recognising him, that was a lost cause. He thinks to convince his peers that they don’t want half breeds living among them, dancing and worse with their daughters. It will be a simple thing, he thinks, to prove my parent’s marriage a fiction, and all of their children barred from my grandfather’s title.”
“Take a seat, James, and don’t loom over me. You don’t think it will be a simple thing?”
James obeyed, lowering himself into the chair opposite hers. “I think the man a fool for underestimating the King of the Mountains. You have heard our grandsire’s solution for swaying opinion our way?”
She had, of course. That was clear from the way she examined his face before she spoke; a considering look, as if wondering how much to trust him. “It is a good idea for you to marry an English girl with impeccable bloodlines.” With a snap, she closed the open book that was sitting on her knee. “That girl will not be me, James. I mean no offence, but I will not marry you, whatever Grandfather might say. I do not intend to wed, ever.”
“Thank you for telling me. Perhaps, you would be kind enough to help me find a bride that will fit the duke’s requirements and my own?”
“And what might your requirements be?” Charlotte asked.
“Someone I could grow to love. Someone who could be my friend and partner, as well as my wife.”
“You are a romantic, cousin. I warn you, Haverford is powerful. He will make it hard to find a girl from the right family who will accept you, despite our family’s name and your father’s wealth. Finding one who is your match may be impossible.”
James looked down at his hands. If she thought him romantic, she would be certain of it in the next moment. “Perhaps I have found her already. What can you tell me of Lady Sophia Belvoir?”
Her Grace of Haverford enters the side door at Fournier’s. No one, not even her husband, would remark on her calling into a restaurant outside of opening hours, particularly one owned by protégés. Still, she does not wish to call His Grace’s attention to her visit. Her servants, she is certain, would keep her secrets — but it would be unfair to put their loyalties in conflict.
She spends a few minutes asking the restaurateur’s wife questions about her children. Though she is anxious to begin her private meeting, politeness is always important, and Cecilia and Marcel Fournier are very dear to her. Soon, though, Cecilia ushers her to the private room she was instructed to ask for.
Grace is already there. “Eleanor! You came.”
“Of course.” Eleanor hugs this dear friend. They have known each other since they were children, grieved together when Grace’s brother was exiled and believed dead, supported one another through the miseries of marriage to selfish brutal promiscuous men, rejoiced in one another’s children, worked together to better the lot of women whose marital unhappiness was made worse by poverty. They shared so much history, and now the respective heads of their families had decreed they must be enemies.
They both sit, and Grace turns to the waiting tea service and the calming ritual of afternoon tea.
“How are you managing, my dear Grace? How are the twins?” Eleanor asks.
“Better than I had hoped. You assured me James would not have changed. He is older, of course, and much more commanding. I can imagine him as the king the papers call him. But he is still the kind man you remember from our first Season. He promises that the girls and I will want for nothing, and may live wherever we please when Winshire finally releases our reins.”
Eleanor looks down at her cup. “I have seen him. Just in passing, at the Monteforte Ball, before Haverford decreed that none of us may attend any event attended by Sutton and his children. Sutton looks well, Grace. He had two young men and a young woman with him.”
“Elfingham, his eldest, and Drew, the fourth son. They are fine young men, Eleanor, even if they are part-Persian. Sutton brought six of his children with him. The two sons you saw, plus two sons still in the schoolroom, and two daughters. The youngest is of an age to be presented, but we — Georgie and I — suggested she wait until next year. By then, all this nonsense will be over.”
“I hope so. What Sutton must be thinking!” James, now Earl of Sutton and heir to his father the Duke of Winshire in place of two deceased older brothers, faces having to prove the legitimacy of his marriage and his children to a committee of the House of Lords. Thanks to Eleanor’s husband, who is claiming that the foreign-born wife was a mistress and the half-breed children an abomination that must not be forced on English Society.
Grace gave a short laugh. “James just smiles, and says the marriage was legal, his children are legitimate, and Haverford is an ass. I beg your pardon, Eleanor.”
Haverford is being an ass, which is not unusual. Eleanor is not going to say so, even in private to this dear friend. She takes another sip of her tea.
“Winshire is in a rare taking, and declares that none of us may speak or even acknowledge any of you.” Grace sighs. “It will be very awkward.”
Eleanor echoes the sigh. “We must decide how to manage our committees, and how to make managing the conflict easier for hostesses who would normally invite us both.” She met her friend’s eyes, a twinkle in her own. “Co-ordinating our social calendars so we obey our respective tyrants may require weekly meetings, dear Grace.”
Grace chuckles. “After all,” she says, “making sure our families don’t mingle is a sort of obedience, is it not?”
***
This is a background scene that won’t appear somewhere at the beginning of To Win a Proper Lady: The Bluestocking and the Barbarian. Haverford’s attempt to have Sutton’s marriage declared invalid is part of that book, which I’m currently expanding into a novel from the novella that was in Holly and Hopeful Hearts. Haverford’s motivation is that he and Sutton were once rivals for Eleanor’s hand. Eleanor preferred Sutton, and Haverford conspired with Sutton’s father to have him exiled. Haverford won a wife, but never her heart.
My heroine Charis didn’t like much about the social rounds in Bath. Had her mother been prepared to pay the subscription she would have enjoyed the circulating library.
By 1814, many towns and most cities had at least one circulating library, perhaps run by a bookstore or printer, but often a stand-alone business. Books were expensive. A 3-volume novel cost the equivalent of 100 dollars in today’s money. Paying a yearly subscription to a library meant you could borrow books that would otherwise be out of your reach.
Rules for a Subscription Library
Circulating libraries became social places, where ladies could meet and be seen. The reading rooms often offered games, and the libraries might also sell other merchandise.
As a member, you could purchase a copy of the library’s catalogue (for about sixpence). You could choose your book from the catalogue, and take a couple home, then another couple when you’d finished those ones. (The number you could borrow at a time varied from library to library.)
What would they think of my library, which I ‘visit’ over the Internet, and which allows me to download 15 ebooks at a time? Or, for that matter, my personal ebook collection, which numbers in the 1000s, many of which have cost me less than five dollars?
(Charis appears in The Beast Next Door, a novella in Valentines from Bath.)
Also see:
The Circulating Library in Regency Times: https://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/the-circulating-library-in-regency-times/
The Circulating Library:
I like to have children in my stories, which means one or more of my characters are parents — and all of my characters have had parents (many still do). In today’s post, I’m asking for comments with excerpts that are somehow to do with parenting. It might be a secondary character or a main protagonist; parenting in action or thinking about the actions of a parent; the character as parent or the character as child.
In the excerpt I have today, from Unkept Promises, Mia sees her husband with his children by his mistress. Backstory: they married many years ago, when she was still a school child, for the sake of her reputation, and he sailed straight away for the Far East to return to his mistress, Kirana, and their children. Kirana and Mia became friends by correspondence, and Jules has just arrived home from a sea voyage to find that Mia has been in his house for a week and has taken over running it.
Adarinta suddenly remembered that Jules had not yet disgorged his gifts. “Where are my…” she broke off, sneaking a glance at Hannah, who had been impressing the little girls with the unexpected information that they were ladies. Marshanda stuck her nose in the air. “Ladies,” she informed her sister, “do not ask. Ladies wait to be offered.”
Jules frown over her head at Mia. “Who has been telling you that?” he asked.
Adarinta, however, was not to be deflected. “I like presents,” she announced. “It makes me very happy when people give me a present. Ibu Mia brought presents for me and Marsha. I expect she brought presents for you, too, Dan. I do like presents.”
Faced with this flagrant attempt to get around the ‘ladies do not ask’ rule, the adults were struggling to maintain their gravity. Even Jules, who was holding onto whatever grudge had blown in with him, couldn’t resist a twinkle. “I happen to have some presents,” he commented.
Adarinta, climbing off his knee, stood before him, her hands clasped before her, her wide eyes pleading. “Oh Papa,” she pleaded, then looked back at Hannah again and chewed thoughtfully at her upper lip. Her eyes lit, and she said, “I have been very good, Papa, have I not, Hannah?” Then added mournfully, “Not as good as Marsha.”
“Dan, would you fetch my duffel?” Jules asked his son, shifting slightly to allow the boy to pass.
“Perhaps, you might take your father up to the nursery, young ladies?” Mia suggested. “Hannah could bring you up some scones. I am sure your father would like a scone his daughters have made.”
Jules, who had his mouth open — Mia was certain — to repudiate the suggestion, shut it again.
“Oh yes, Papa. Come and see.” Marshanda took one of Jules’s hands, and Adarinta, not to be left behind, took the other. “Hannah made us some curtains, Papa. And Ibu Mia bought us a table and chairs to do our schoolwork. I can read, Papa. Truly.”
Why on earth, Eleanor wondered, had the duke her husband asked her to have this unlikable pair to afternoon tea? She knew he did business with the man, who continued to claim his naval ranking, though he had retired to run a large import export business.
But that did not require socialising with the man and his wife. The duke must owe Captain Hackett a large favour. He had even stayed to exchange a few pleasantries, before carrying Hackett off with him for a game of billiards, leaving the ladies, as he said, to get to know one another.
Mrs Hackett, a quiet faded woman who had said little in the past half hour looked alarmed at her husband’s desertion.
“Another cup of tea?” The duchess asked her. Mrs Hackett bobbed her head and pushed her cup forward. Eleanor prepared the cup with cream into sugars while she contemplated how to draw the woman out.
In the end, she decided on bluntness. “It seems our husbands mean me to be of some assistance to you, Mrs Hackett. Perhaps if you can tell me what it is you need?”
Mrs Hackett blushed. “I am so embarrassed, your grace. I hardly know how to ask. Is it true what they say? Does your husband expect you to acknowledge his by-blows?”
Eleanor had seldom been asked a more impertinent question. “I hardly think, Mrs Hackett,” but the woman compounded her rudeness by interrupting.
“I know I am being very impolite and forward, but indeed the captain assured me that such was quite acceptable in the best families, and that you were a lady who took such circumstances in your stride. That is why he asked the duke if I might meet you. I know it is most presumptuous of me, but, your grace, I have no one else to advise me.”
Despite herself, Eleanor found her sympathies were engaged. “You had better tell me the whole story.”
Mrs Hackett’s words tumbled over themselves as she explained her failure to bear her husband a son, and his determination to have a boy of his own blood to inherit his business.” The captain, it seemed, had such a son — a boy born to his mistress after he had dismissed the girl.
“He plans to claim the lad, and give him his name, and bring him up with our daughters. Tell me, your grace, is he mad?”
Captain Hackett is one of the villains in Unkept Promises, the fourth novel in the Golden Redepenning series, which I’m currently writing. The boy in question and his half-sisters, whose father is Jules Redepenning, are currently on their way to England with Mia Redepenning, who has adopted them after their mother died of consumption.
Here’s what I’m working on at the moment:
Marketing last year’s holiday anthologies. I have two novellas: Paradise Regained, historical fiction, in the Bluestocking Belles’ Follow Your Star Home, and Abbie’s Wish, a contemporary romantic suspense, in Christmas Wishes on Main Street.
Doing the final check of and marketing the next Belles’ box set, Valentines From Bath, which includes my Regency novella The Beast Next Door.
Writing the next novel in the Regency series The Golden Redepennings. Unkept Promises is around one third written. Earlier this week, I mapped the scenes to the darkest point, where all hope is lost.
Writing the made-to-order I gave away as a party prize at the Follow Your Star Home launch. The winner asked for a laird, a distant castle, and the enemies to lovers plot type. It turned out to be a medieval and begins with a nun sitting beside the bed of the knight who was wounded saving her life.
Writing, with Mariana Gabrielle (Mari Christie) the final chapters of Never Kiss a Toad, a Victorian saga about the children of her rake and mine from our Regency books. Their fathers catch the son of one in bed with the daughter of the other, and they are forcibly separated. At long last, after 76 chapters, they are back in England together. We’re posting a chapter at a time in Wattpad, and are currently posting chapter 68.
Rewriting The Bluestocking and the Barbarian, a Regency novella from the Belles’ Holly and Hopeful Hearts box set. I’m going to turn it into a novel, the first in a series about the children of a Duke who has been king in a remote central Asian kingdom.
Beginning the planning for the next two books in this series. (Hint: book three is about Aldridge.)
Planning a Regency novella for the next Belles’ box set. All the novellas will be about people who return to England for the reading of a will. There may be ghosts.
Planning a novel for a series by different authors with common elements. My hero is a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars. He was trained as an assassin and is now a contract killer. The heroine is either a Quaker or a Wesleyan, and a pacifist.
All of these are for publication this year, which I can manage if I get off the internet and write 2,000 words a day.
My writing has speeded up marvellously since I learned a simple trick. If there’s something I don’t know, or a sequence I can’t quite visualise, I make a note and move on.
Below, I’ve included an excerpt from Unkept Promises, the next Redepenning novel, full of notes to myself
How about you? What do you do in your rough drafts, and are you game to post an example in the comments?
Fortune and Hannah met them at the dock gates with the break, a large open carriage capable of taking the entire family along the coast to eat the picnic that was undoubtedly in the covered baskets Jules could see tucked under the seats.
[check where a picnic might take place. During drive, Jules abstracted, thinking about what the girls and Mia have told him. Dan pointing out all the different types of ship in the harbour, where they might have come from and be going, and what they were good for. Girls asking questions until he gets to one he can’t answer and askes Jules who shakes off his mood and attends.]
Hannah and Mia set the picnic up in the shade of a tree [rock?? Pavilion they brought with them???] and soon they were all enjoying [etc. Not sure what I want to do with this part of the scene. Girls need to ask politely to be allowed to leave the …. blanket? ]
[Hannah produces a ball, suggests a game. Girls against boys. Dan scathing about the girls’ likely ability.]
“Could we sit this one out?” Jules asked Mia. “I’d like for us to talk, if you do not mind.”
“Of course,” Mia said. “Hannah, you and the others go ahead.”
In moments, the game was underway, Hannah and the girls against Fortune and Dan. Dan’s confidence took a swift knock when Fortune failed to catch the ball Dan had thrown and Marsha raced in front of him and kicked it to Hannah, who in her turn kicked it between the rocks they had marked as the girl’s goal.
He rallied, though, and the next round of play saw him sneaking the ball from under Marsha’s nose and kicking his own goal.
“This will do the girls a world of good,” Mia decided. “I have not wanted to venture beyond the boundaries of town without an escort, and there is no where there they can run and romp like this without censure from the biddies.”
“You are determined to turn them into English gentlewomen.” Jules tried to keep the censure from his voice. He would allow his unaccountable wife her chance to make her case, but what the hell was she thinking?
“I am determined to make sure they know Society’s expectations,” Mia corrected. “I know how it feels to be at sea, knowing that something you have done has drawn disapprobation, but having no idea what it is or how to correct it. I will not leave them as ill prepared as I was.”
What had happened to Mia to fuel the vehemence of her tone? He supposed he understood. The child he’d met in the smuggler’s cave had been raised by a reclusive scholar — or had raised herself while ignored by her father.
“I thought my father and Susan would look out for you,” he said. They should have. He had trusted them to do so.
“It was not their fault, Captain.” Mia smiled, and reached out as if to pat his hand where it rested be-side hers on the blanket. If that was her intent, she thought better of it and instead folded it in her lap with its counterpart. “They are part of Society. They grew up knowing all the habits of courtesy your kind take for granted, and all your silly little rituals. It never occurred to them that I was as ignorant of what to them seemed natural behaviour. They were always there to tell me what I had done wrong, and they tried to predict my next mistake and prevent it — but I made so many!” The last was said with a laugh, but Jules could sense pain beneath it, and his heart ached for the little girl he had abandoned.
“I am sorry,” he said. “I had no idea.”
“I will not have that happen to Marshanda and Adarinta.
Charis Fishingham was curled up on a window seat in the library, half hidden behind the drapes. With luck, her mother and sisters would be too busy to come looking for her. They enjoyed nothing more than a good house party.
On this fine day, the hostess had organised a number of activities. Some of the guests had gone riding, others walking, still others played Pall Mall, or sat in the shade of the trees gossiping.
For once, her mother didn’t insist on all doing things together, so Charis had taken her opportunity to slip away to the library that she had seen on the first night, when there hostess had given them a tour of the public rooms of the house.
She was so immersed in the novel she had found on the shelves that she didn’t realise she was no longer alone, until she heard someone speaking. She looked around the corner of the curtain. An elegant lady had taken a seat by the fireplace and was speaking to a maid, telling her to place a tea tray on a nearby table.
Charis drew back. Should she announce herself? Certainly, she should not lurk here, hidden. Perhaps the lady was expecting company. Perhaps she had been here for a while, and it was already too late for Charis to pop out from behind the drapes like a bad surprise in a farce.
As she worried away at the problem, the lady provided the solution. “Will you not come and join me, young lady on the window seat?”
Charis could feel herself blush from head to toe as she crept out. She felt even worse when she could see the lady clearly. It was the Duchess of Haverford, a grande dame of Society as high above the Fishingham’s touch as the stars were above the sky.
“Miss Fishingham, is it not? I apologise for disturbing your reading, Miss Fishingham, but I beg you to take pity on an old woman and keep me company.” The Duchess waved Charis to a seat. She was anything but old; in fact, she looked a lot younger than Charis’s mother, though her son — who was also at the house party — was in his thirties, so she must be fifty, at least.
Charis realised she was standing like a stick and gaping like a fish. She shut her mouth, and took the offered seat. What on earth did one say to a Duchess? Matilda and Eugenie would know, but Charis knew little about Society, and what little she knew she did not like.
The Duchess surprised her again. “Now, Miss Fishingham, I understand from your sisters that you and I share an interest. I am passionately devoted to the education of women, and I am told that you hold classes for your maids and the girls of the village. Please, tell me more, and tell me if there is anything I can do to help.”
The first month of 2019 is trundling by at a great rate of knots, and I’ve only just started my to-do list.
In theory, taking my day job to part time is going to give me heaps more time for writing and marketing books. So how is that working out for me?
My personal romantic hero gave me Dragon dictation software for Christmas. In theory, that should speed up the writing. I’m using it at the moment, and certainly this blog post is appearing on the screen far faster than if I typed it.
To meet my self-set deadlines, I need to average around 15 to 18,000 words a week in the first draft. Typing, that’s around 18 hours work, and I can do that if I don’t do much else. In theory, once Dragon and I get up to speed, I should more than double my writing speed.
I can spend the extra time on all the other stages. Editing, proofreading, commissioning or making covers — and above all marketing.
One of my top jobs for January is to finish the marketing plan I’ve been talking about for at least two years. I’m still using the trailing elements of the one I created when I first started, adapted and extended as I learned more about the bazzillion book marketplace, but still demonstrably inadequate.
Readers have downloaded more than 90,000 copies of my books (most as ebooks, but a few as print) from the major retailers. It sound like a lot, but the margin is so small that I’m just treading water. I make enough so that my writing mostly pays for itself. I pay for subscriptions to web hosts and research sites, cover design, proofreading, and all the other stuff I need from my author account, though I occasionally have to pay for a workshop or accommodation for a conference out of the money from my day job.
Must do better. To really fly, I need to reach more readers.
Top task, of course, is to write and produce the best books I can, and to do it often. What with one thing and another, I’m way behind on my publishing plans. Everyone tells me that, to sell books, you need to be seen in the marketplace with a new book. Around this time last year, I’d had a book out every month for four months, and was beginning to see some results. Then I got sick again.
Another is to have complete series to sell. I keep getting distracted, and I need to focus and finish the two series that I’ve started. One major goal for this year is to get Unkept Promises out and at least write the next Redepenning. Another is to publish the first four in the series that begins with The Bluestocking and the Barbarian (which I’m rewriting as a novel).
This way, I can finish both series in 2020.
But it’s still only a hobby to amuse myself and a few other people such as yourself if the rest of the reading public doesn’t know I exist.
I’m working on it. First step, write the Marketing Plan.
Meanwhile, if you’d like to help, please recommend my books to your friends, and ask for them at your library. I’d also love more reviews. If you had time to leave a couple of sentences of honest review wherever you buy my books or on BookBub, that it be a great help.