The winner of a signed copy of The Winter Queen is…Leona! Please send us your snail mail address at riskies@yahoo.com
The winner of a signed copy of The Winter Queen is…Leona! Please send us your snail mail address at riskies@yahoo.com
Deadline status–The book is turned in, yay! I celebrated by spending all day Sunday sitting around and–gasp!–reading a romance novel and eating leftover Halloween candy. It was wonderful. Now onto the next project.
In the meantime, what with this just-finished book and various projects in various stages, I’ve been thinking a lot about characters. A few weeks ago I blogged about a book I was reading called Sixpence House by Paul Collins, where he talked about his family’s move to Hay-on-Wye, “the town of books.” In one chapter he talks about a trend in the 1920s for books supposedly “written” by a Puritan woman named Patience Worth via Ouija boards, but actually written by a very sneaky man named Casper Yost. Collins writes, “Yost rightly sensed that many people are partial to the notion that, like St. Louis housewives with Ouija boards, all writers are somehow mere vessels for Truth and Beauty when they compose. That we are not really in control. This is a variation on that twee little fable that writers like to pass off on gullible readers, that a character can develop a will of his own and “take over a book.” This makes writing sound supernatural and mysterious, like possession by the fairies. The reality tends to involve a spare room, a pirated copy of MS Word, and a table bought on sale at Target. A character can no more take over your novel than an eggplant and a jar of cumin can take over your kitchen.”
Well, of course this is technically true. I have never had a character barge into my writing space and snatch the keyboard out of my hands to write the story themselves. I wish they would. I also think it would be kinda fun if the fairies burst in and gave me some help here. (I also wish the eggplant and cumin would take over my kitchen so I don’t have to make dinner myself!). Yet there are definitely times when I feel I am not completely in charge of the story. As the creator of the tale, I can make the characters do what I want–in theory. In fact, if they don’t like where I am taking them they often make the story stall. It won’t move forward no matter what I try. They’re like stubborn toddlers who sit down in the middle of Target and start shrieking because they don’t like where things are going. Once I figure out how exactly I am going against their characters, how the story is being forced on them, things usually start moving again. The characters always take precedence over the plot–it’s their natures that make the plot move, at least for me. In that way they do take over the story, but I still have to be the one to do the hard work while they’re running around having adventures and falling in love.
Secondary characters do this, too. In the book I just finished, Duchess of Sin, there were 2 romances in addition to the main one of Anna Blacknall and Conlan McTeer. One was just a beginning–it continues in book 3, Lady of Seduction, but the other played out in its entirety here. And those two really, really wanted more time! I think Harlequin has the right idea with their “Undone” stories–they’re often connected to a longer book, and are a great way to give fascinating secondary characters their due. I can placate them with that, and they leave the main narrative alone. Same with characters who get their own full-length book. But what about when they are just meant to be supporting characters for this one story, and still insist on being scene-stealers???
When I’m working on a book, these characters do tend to run my life. I have conversations with them (out loud!) in the car, and forget to buy bread at the grocery store because I’m arguing with them about a plot twist. Then they are sent off to my editor’s desk and a new set of stubborn people move in. It’s wonderful, really.
Do your characters take over your life? What makes a memorable, realistic character to you? And are you as hungry for eggplant parmesan as I am???
(BTW, on Wednesday and again on Sunday I’ll be at Unusual Historicals, with excerpts and interviews on The Winter Queen, with one more chance to win a signed copy. And on the 5th I’ll be reading from TWQ on Blog Talk radio at 12 pm CST!)
Many of the trappings of the holiday we would definitely recognize from our own deck-the-hallsing. Anything that was still green was used in copious amounts, such as holly, ivy, yew, and bay (hence the rhyme “Holly and ivy, box and bay, put in the house for Christmas day!”). The wreaths and swags would be tied up with ribbons and hung around the house, with the Yule log kicking things off on Christmas Eve. The men of the house would trek out into the woods to find the largest log possible and it would be paraded into the Great Hall, decorated with wreaths and ribbons. A bit of last year’s log was always saved to light the new one, and it was a tradition to sit around the fire and tell tales of Christmases past on that night.
We would also recognize the food! (Though maybe not all of it–how many of us have roasted peacock, redressed in its skin and feathers, on our holiday tables?) Roasted meats were big, of course–pork, beef, chicken, and the boar’s head of the song, along with stewed and spiced vegetables and fine white manchet bread. Queen Elizabeth, unlike her father, was a light eater, but she did love sweets, which were prominent on her Christmas table. Candied flowers, hard candies in a thick syrup called suckets (eaten with special sucket spoons), Portugese figs, precious Spanish oranges, fruit tarts, gingerbread, and the famous figgy pudding. The grand feasts ended with the parade of the subtlety, a sugar art sculpture. (In 1564, it was a candy Whitehall Palace, complete with a frozen sugar Thames). All this was washed down with rivers of wines (malmsey, Gascon, and Rhenish wines were the most popular at Court), beer, and ale, with lots of singing and goofiness predictably ensuing. In 1564, though, they could work off all this eating by skating, sledding, and hunting, thus keeping their fine figures to attract the Queen and other courtiers.
On my website I have a few Elizabethan-era recipes for the holidays, but this was my favorite (the famous roasted peacock):
“Take a peacock, break its neck and drain it. (Super easy, right?) Carefully skin it, keeping the skin and feathers together with the head still attached at the end of the neck. Roast only the bird with its legs tucked under. When it is roasted enough, (how do we do this without pre-heating??) take it out and let it cool. Sprinkle cumin on the inside of the skin, then wind it with the feathers and the tail about the body. Serve with the tail feathers upright, its neck propped up from within, and a lighted taper in its beak. If it is a royal dish, cover the beak with fine gold leaf. Carry the bird to the table at the head of a procession of lower dishes for to be sampled first by the monarch. Serve with ginger sauce.”
What are your favorite holiday traditions??? Any special foods you like to serve (besides peacock?). Would anyone else besides me like a time machine to go back and have Christmas in Tudor England (or any other period), just once?
A few weeks ago I blogged on the birthday of a “bad girl of history,” Pauline Bonaparte. Today is the birthday of another one! Ninon de Lenclos, who was born November 10, 1620. Ninon was a writer, courtesan, and patron of the arts in Louis XIV’s France. When she died at the age of 85, Saint-Simon wrote of her, “A shining example of the triumph of vice, when directed with intelligence and redeemed by a little virtue.”
She was born Anne de Lenclos in Paris, “Ninon” was her childhood nickname. In 1632 her father was exiled from France for dueling, and when her mother died a few years later Ninon entered a convent. This didn’t last very long. She was determined to remain unmarried, but also to devote her life to pleasure of all kinds–not a life suited to a convent! On her return to Paris, she quickly became very popular in the salons, and soon opened her own, which was a center of the literary arts. Moliere was her protege, and on her death she left money for the 9-year-old son of her accountant to buy books–he would later be known as Voltaire.
She also took up the life of a courtesan, with a succession of rich and noble lovers, including the King’s own cousin Gaston de Coligny, and the duc de la Rochefoucauld. Saint-Simon wrote, “Ninon always had crowds of adorers but never more than one lover at a time, and when she tired of the present occupier she said so frankly and took another. Yet such was the authority of this wanton, that no man dared fall out with his successful rival; he was only too happy to be allowed to visit as a familiar friend.” Her profession and her outspoken opinions against organized religion caused her to be imprisoned at the Madelonnettes Convent in 1656 at the instigation of Anne of Austria, Queen Regent for her son Louis XIV. (When he grew up, of course, this sort of life was much more accepted!). She was soon visited by Queen Christina of Sweden (then abdicated and traveling around Europe), who wrote to Cardinal Mazarin and arranged Ninon’s release. (At one point in her life, Cardinal Richelieu offered her 50,000 crowns for one night in her bed. She took the money, but sent a friend instead. Just one of the many anecdotes of her eventful career…)
In 1659, Ninon wrote La coquette vengee, defending the possibility of living a good life in the absence of religion. She became friends with Racine, and also with Francoise d’Aubigne (later known as Madame de Maintenon, secret wife of Louis XIV). She went on writing and hosting her salons until her death in 1705, a very wealthy and famous woman.
There aren’t a lot of sources on her life in English, though she appears in many bios of other figures of the period. I have an old volume in translation by Antoine Bret, The Biography of Ninon de Lenclos, and there is one in French by Rogier Duchene. And there is a Dorothy Parker poem, Ninon de Lenclos On Her Last Birthday.
I guess Ninon could be the heroine of one of the popular “courtesan” romances, except she never settled down! 🙂 Do you like courtesan heroines?
And I almost forgot! I have a UK release this month, To Kiss a Count (the third in my Muses of Mayfair trilogy! These will be out in the US in April, May, and June 2010…)
I’ll also be at a 6-author booksigning at a Borders in Albuquerque on Saturday the 14th–if you’re in the area come by and say hi!
I’m out of town for a few days and on a borrowed computer, so this week’s post is short and image-heavy! Enjoy…
After I finished the last deadline, and before I started the next one, I had the great luxury of reading not 1 but 2 romances from my TBR pile! One was Carolyn’s Indiscreet, which was wonderful–exotic locale, deep, dark emotion, complex characters. The other (which shall remain nameless, but was not by a Risky!) featured a hero who was such a man-slut (and probably an alcoholic, too; on top of which he was not very bright) I feared the heroine (who seemed like a nice girl) would catch some terrible disease from him. When they married at the end, I thought he would be faithful–until the next woman crossed his path.
To cleanse the palette, I went to my ultimate go-to “cheer up” writer–Jane Austen, of course! I do love nearly all her heroes (except Edmund Bertram, who let’s face it is something of a priss. But he does seem perfect for Fanny, and will probably never cheat on her or have his nose fall off from syphilis! And Knightley seems kinda bossy). Darcy, Wentworth, Tilney, etc–reliable, attractive guys all. It’s the Willoughbys and Wickhams who are trouble (and not the fun kind, either), and who get kicked to the curb in the end. Here are a few reasons to love an Austen man:
(I know he’s not an Austen man, but I couldn’t resist including him!)
Ditto this one…
Who is your favorite???