As you all probably know (ahem. Blatant self promotion warning ahead) I’m being published by Harlequin Spice later this year, and
As you all probably know (ahem. Blatant self promotion warning ahead) I’m being published by Harlequin Spice later this year, and
One of my favorite TV shows is I Survived… on the Biography Channel. On this show a person sits against a black background and tells their story of survival. There’s no reenactment, just flashes to photographs and videos of the locations where the story took place. It is surprisingly effective. Some people tell stories about surviving the elements, a snowstorm, the ocean, the jungle. Others tell stories of surviving abduction or assault by robbers or strangers. Too many stories are told by women who survived attempts to kill them by husbands or lovers.
This weekend I came across an “I Survived” story in a book I’m reading, London’s Sinful Secret: The Bawdy History and Very Public Passions of London’s Georgian Age by Dan Cruickshank. This book tells about the Georgian and Regency sex industry, the world of courtesans and prostitutes in which young and innocent girls were enticed or trapped by shrewd bawds.
In 1753, eighteen year old sevant Elizabeth Canning was abducted by two men and taken to a house where a gypsy woman tried to coerce her into prostitution. Elizabeth refused and was imprisoned in an attic room and given only bread and water to eat in an effort to wear down her resolve. The gypsy woman threatened to cut her throat if Elizabeth tried to escape. After 28 days, Elizabeth managed to remove a board from a window, to climb out and jump to the ground and to find her way back home. Her ordeal outraged the citizenry. The authorities made an effort to locate the house where she was imprisoned. Elizabeth identified the house and the gypsy woman who was arrested.
Here’s where the story turns strange in a way that could only happen in this era. The gypsy woman vowed her innocence and soon the citizenry were taking sides. Who was guilty and who was innocent? The gypsy had an alibi and Elizabeth’s story had inconsistencies. Ultimately, the gypsy was acquited and Elizabeth was convicted of perjury and was transported to New England.
But Elizabeth survived even this consequence. She eventually married a great-nephew of the governor of Connecticut and had five children.
This story was much more complex than I’ve described here, with Henry Fielding and others involved, but even if Elizabeth’s story was not as she described (and never wavered from), she had survived something. Her condition when she escaped was “deplorable.” Her hands and face were black, her ear was injured and bleeding. She was dressed only in a shift and petticoat.
I love survival stories. I love hearing about how people can endure the unendurable and make it through. We humans can be a tough lot, whether we live in Georgian England or in our modern, sometimes dangerous world.
This weekend, as the events of the Tucson shooting were unfolding and the fate of Congresswoman Giffords was uncertain, I thought of I Survived…. and the stories of so many people who had managed to survive shootings, stabbings, shark attacks, subzero temperatures, etc. Perhaps if they could survive, so would Giffords and the other injured victims. I pray so, and I pray for those who did not make it. My heart goes out to their families.
Do you like survival stories? Do you know of a good one?
Some of my favorites include the duct tape episodes (they even built a boat out of it) and the one where they (sadly!) proved that Captain Kirk could not have built a bamboo cannon to defeat his Gorn Opponent in the “Arena” episode. Star Trek and black powder—what’s not to love?
Biscuits appear to have arrived in one of three states: hard, jaw-breaking and alive with maggots, as Napier indicates forcibly enough, or crushed to crumbs and mouldered to dust, or sometimes good but old. One day in November 1813 each man in the 43rd Light Infantry secured a biscuit of American make: nearly an inch thick, they were so hard as to require the stamp of an iron heel or some such hammer to break them. These American biscuits were even thick enough to save a man’s life. During the march to La Petite Rhune a fortnight before Christmas 1813 the officers of that regiment ate some for breakfast at two o’clock in the morning, when Lieutenant Wyndham Madden remarked that their thickness would turn a bullet aside, at the same time stuffing one into the breast of his jacket. ‘Never was prediction more completely verified,’ wrote a brother subaltern, ‘for early in the day the biscuit was shattered to pieces, turning the direction of the bullet from as gallant and true a heart as ever beat under a British uniform.’
Mythbusters has boards on www.discovery.com where one can submit new myths. In the historical myths section, I found someone has posted something similar related to the American Civil War, so I added this Napoleonic bit to that thread. It would be fun to see this one tested!
Do any of you enjoy Mythbusters? Have any favorite episodes? Any myths, Regency related or otherwise, that you’d like to see them try to bust?
Elena
As a writer (theoretically, at least), I think about my characters even when I am not actively engaged in continuing their stories.
With my new schedule (working four days a week at an office now, continuing other freelance projects), I am thinking WAY more than writing these days. Which is fine, only thinking doesn’t do much for word count.
I think, and most of all worry, about my characters, who are alive in my head, at least. Are they okay? What will happen next to them? It’s been a long time since they’ve eaten, are their tummies growling?
I am in the middle of at two books; in one, the hero and heroine are on the NYC subway following a fight with demons in a Chinatown restaurant. In the other, the heroine is grappling with her ex’s debilitating illness, visiting him in the hospital in an unfamiliar city.
As one friend pointed out, that’s a long time to be in a hospital. It’s been at least six months since I’ve done anything but think about those characters.
I picture my characters frozen in their time, rather like the fighters in Asian films who get frozen in mid-air while fighting. (Side-note: For some super heroic action and adventure, often with romance, go delve into wuxia films, which feature the heroic adventures of martial artists).
I need to rescue them, though, bring them back down to the ground, or out of the subway or the hospital. As I become more accustomed to my schedule, I am going to look to Carolyn for inspiration, who is also a working mom who writes whenever she can find time, and produces actual books each year, not just leaving her poor characters to be suspended in neglect.
That’s one of my goals this year, to integrate writing into working. Meanwhile, think happy thoughts for my characters, who really deserve some love after all this time spent alone. I hope next week to be able to report–proudly–that I have gotten some writing done.
Meanwhile, Happy New Year! And good luck to everyone else out there with New Year’s Resolutions.
Happy new year, everyone and big congrats to Carolyn on her release this week!
This was quite a week for me as I finished both my second Jane as a vamp book (no title yet) and revisions for my Harlequin Spice contemporary, Tell Me More (August 2011). I found Jane 2 an incredibly difficult book to write and it weighed me down like a millstone around my neck that I couldn’t move forward on it–I had one major false start so I got off to a late start. I have been absolutely euphoric ever since Sunday night, when I sent it in, and pretty happy about the revisions that I sent in Tuesday.
So having spent the last few months in a state of whiny self pity squeezing out Jane 2 and Mr. Bishop and the Actress (Little Black Dress, next month!) and not allowing myself to do things because I had to write (I wasn’t very productive but I spent a lot of energy agonizing), I really feel this new year is a fresh start.
I don’t make resolutions, but this is what I hope to do in 2011:
Sounds all fairly doable, right? But right now I’m going to take a nap. Happy new year, dear Risky friends. What are you up to today?
