I am at RWA in Anaheim where internet access is limited. So I will only tell you now that I will have a real post for you next week.
I am at RWA in Anaheim where internet access is limited. So I will only tell you now that I will have a real post for you next week.
At last, my reversion for the first novel I wrote, Passion’s Song, came through. And now you can read it. (I’m working on the POD version). Cover art by the wonderful Patricia Schmitt.
Passion’s Song was originally published in 1987. Yes. That’s right. 19 and 87. Before the internet was anything but a really neat tool for academics and DARPA. Before the World Wide Web. “Portable” computers were the size of 3 breadboxes end to end.
I was shaking after I heard the message on my answering machine tape offering to buy my book. Shaking. I had to go walk around the block just to calm down enough to think straight.
I wrote it on an Apple IIc using a nifty program called Word Juggler. I once wrote to the developer of Word Juggler about a problem I felt was a bug and he wrote me a very long personal reply explaining how hard he worked on his program. Then he called me an idiot.
It took 9 hours to print out the manuscript. NINE hours. I had to wait for a weekend to print it out. Editorial comments were actually in red pencil and queries were on special pink tearaway flags pasted to the MS page. I had to MAIL the MS and there was no overnight delivery option.
It reflects the writer I was then. I look at it now, and well. There is is. The book I wrote in 1987. Bought two weeks after my one query made it to NY. Edited to DEATH and then given back to me with instructions to “put it back the way it was.” So, yeah.
American orphan Isobel Rowland learns she is the illegitimate daughter of an English aristocrat only when her father at last locates her and brings her to England. Her father intends to find her a husband, and if she can catch the interest of Alexander, Marquess of Hartforde, all the better. She hopes to continue her musical studies but finds it impossible unless she masquerades as a young gentleman. Alexander’s interest in remarriage is close to nil, though he finds Miss Rowland intriguing. He is more than happy to act as patron to a promising American musician, Ian Rowland. When Alexander discovers that Ian and Isobel are the same person, their lives collide and before long, they have no choice but to marry and attempt to make a life together.
I couldn’t really read it because then I’d want to completely re-write it. Because I am not the same writer. I’ve learned a lot about writing and the business and, of course, changed as a person and a writer.
Passion’s Song is my words in 1987, and I totally own them. It’s a fun story, with an evil step-brother, a (late) wife who wasn’t very nice, a perky younger sister, and a jaded aristocrat hero with blond hair and a queue. There’s puppies, too.
All I’ve done is had it proofread and corrected some typos that were in the original. Like, somehow the copyeditor (and me!) missed that Brooks’s is s’s. I had to scan it from paper, so there were a lot of OCR errors to correct. My proofreader did an amazing, amazing job of catching OCR errors and original typos. Of course, I did my own proofing for errors with the digital display. I’ve already re-uploaded to correct a few more errors I made.
It’s $3.99, no DRM, available worldwide.
Where you can get it now:
Hopefully SW will get the book on sale at places like Sony, Diesel Books and other wonderful sellers of eBooks.
I was trying to figure out what I would blog about and I thought that, in honor of it being Wednesday (“Hump Day”) when you read this, I would find out something about camels in the Regency. So I Googeled Regency Camels. Sometimes the Internet surprises me.
Regency Camel Toe.
I am not kidding.
Of course I clicked. http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/regency-camel-toe So should you. It’s safe for work except for the part where if you click it won’t look very work-related.
BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I almost died laughing. Camel toe indeed. Pink breeches!
The link above will guide you here: Regency Camel Toe. Essentially safe for work except for the not working part.
Here is a picture of a real camel.
You may read about Camels here:
Yup. Sometimes the internet surprises me.
I just turned in my story for Midnight Scandals, a historical romance anthology with Courtney Milan and Sherry Thomas. I immediately started work on Book 5 of the My Immortals series. Now that Free Fall, my My Immortals novella is out of Kindle Select, I’ve also worked on getting it published to all other vendors. It should start showing up shortly.
Naturally with all this writing to do, I’ve been reading a lot because I can tell myself it’s practically work and almost writing! Writers need to read!
One of the many books I’ve read recently is Eric Jager’s The Last Duel. I’m really surprised I never heard about this book when it first came out in 2004. It’s exactly the sort of book I would have bought right away.
The gripping, atmospheric true story of the “duel to end all duels” in medieval France: a trial by combat pitting a knight against a squire accused of violating the knight’s beautiful young wife.
I loved this book. It’s everything I adore about history books and more. While I read the Kindle version– more about that later –I bought it in hardback for my dad, who I think will like it a lot, too and will also get my mom a Kindle copy. I’ve been pimping it to everyone. Even you. Especially YOU!
Based on extensive research in Normandy and Paris, The Last Duel brings to life a colorful, turbulent age and three unforgettable characters caught in a fatal triangle of crime, scandal, and revenge. It is at once a moving human drama, a captivating detective story, and an engrossing work of historical intrigue.
The quote sounds like it’s overblown, but you know what? It’s not. I finished this book nearly 10 days ago, and I read it steadily until I was done. I’m STILL thinking about it. At times I forgot I was reading about something that really happened. And then I remember that lives were truly at stake.
One of the things I really enjoyed about the book was the meticulous research. The duel and the circumstances surrounding it were sensational at the time and for centuries afterward. There is, therefore, an unusual amount of surviving documentation.
I fell in love a little with LeCog, the attorney for the defendant in the matter. It was plain that he was a meticulous man and quite insightful. I changed my mind once or twice about the two men, by the way. When the duel took place, I was glued to my chair, because not only did I have to know what happened, I was very much aware there was no guarantee that the outcome would be the one I hoped for.
The Kindle version was, in the main, very well put together. The footnotes actually worked, for example, in that I ended up at the right footnote and that footnote took me back to my place.
I have two gripes and one of them is a big one. At normal size, the images in the text were crisp and clear, but too small to read. Once I expanded them to examine maps and artwork in more detail, the images were blurry. Text in the images was unreadable.
My other gripe is that the images were in black and white. I was reading on my iPad 3, by the way, so this mattered to me a lot. Unlike print, color in an ebook does not cost a cent.
Let me say that again: color in an eBook does not cost a cent.
Those source images, many of them contemporary artwork, are in color in real life and my guess is that the original photographs were probably submitted in color, too. The image IN COLOR on the cover is also in the book. In black and white.
I would have paid extra for an eBook with those images in color and in high-resolution.
If you have any interest in the Medieval period, this is a great book to have.
I think it was the fine folks over at Dear Author who coined the phrase “Mistorical” to describe historical romances that are, for lack of a better term, light on the accuracy. “Wallpaper Historical” is a similar term. Mistorical, I believe, is intended to describe not just books that are light on the factual accuracy, but books that appear to be set in a world that never existed. It’s a Meta-Regency setting as opposed to an actual-Regency setting.
The term mistorical is a bit perjorative in that it implies something that is wrong — hence the Latin prefix mis. There is a suggestion in there that perhaps the author is not aware of any errors. Although I think that’s true for some authors, I’m not sure about that as a blanket statement.
The meta-Regency is, for me, a world that never existed and, moreover, is a world that the author and reader very likely both understand did not exist. The stories are built on a set of Regency signifiers that the savvy reader instantly recognizes and navigates.
It’s a world where a woman’s Empire gown can be removed by unfastening a few hooks, no one goes to Church or is genuinely afraid for their immortal soul, and no one blinks an eye when a woman demands to know why she can’t go to Oxford, as if the unfairness ought to be patently obvious (even though, historically, the “fairness” of that prohibition was so obvious as to not need discussion). Reform is in the air and the hero supports it. There may well be sexy lingerie, even though sexy underwear didn’t exist. There are horses and carriages, slippers and ballrooms, eleven o’clock tea and the use of the word “rather” in place of the modern intensifier of “fucking.” I rather think that’s awesome, my lord instead of Dude. That’s fucking awesome.
Then there’s the historicals that exist in a Regency constructed through use of a greater set of known facts. In this sort of historical you are unlikely to find a heroine who decides to dispense with her corset in the name of fashion. This heroine might recognize the unfairness of not being allowed to go to Oxford, but she will also be aware that the weight of public conviction is against a change in the policy.
These books tend to explore the impact and meaning of these very real power legal and cultural imbalances and the ways in which the hero and heroine can both transgress those boundaries.
While I enjoy and tend to prefer historicals that are strong on the history, I also enjoy historicals that appear to be set in this Meta-Regency period. I have read and re-read certain “Wallpaper” historicals multiple times.
I’ve reached the point, however, where I don’t feel these two kinds of books should be lumped together at all. When I’m in the mood for the Meta-Regency, I wish I knew a quick way to find one, other than by author name. And when I want a book that gives me a more historically accurate grounding, I wish I could more easily find them, too.
There’s nothing worse than finding out you’ve just paid money for a Historical romance only to find you have a meta-Regency world instead.
So, where do you stand? Do you have a preference? Do you care? Opine in the comments.