Category: Writing

Posts in which we talk about the writing craft and process

The Many Voices of Megan Frampton

Updated on July 5, 2013 by Myretta

Most of you who follow this blog probably know that Megan Frampton is fun and quirky, has excellent sartorial taste, and mostly wears black (presuming that those last two are not mutually exclusive). You have probably read some of her writing but, unless you’ve read it all, you don’t know the breadth of her talent. So, today, I’m going to give you a little taste.

Those of you who have been following Megan for a while, probably remember A Singular Lady, her maiden publication, a trad Regency from Signet in 2005 (right before Signet stopped publishing Trads). This is Megan’s trad voice: a bit formal with an undertone of humor, something you would definitely recognize as “Regency.”

If you’re new to Megan, you might not know that she also writes women’s fiction as Megan Caldwell. Her first book, Vanity Fare, was published by William Morrow late last year. The Amazon description of Vanity Fare calls it “a charming tale of food, family, literature, and romance in which a 40-year-old newly single Brooklyn mother embarks on a culinary writing career and finds herself at the center of a deliciously tempting love triangle.” And so it is. This fun book showcases Megan’s sharp, snarky, engaging contemporary voice. This voice is highlighted in the interstitial material (a specialty of Megan’s) in which the heroine writes copy for a new bakery across from the New York Public Library, using literary references. Each chapter is headed by a bakery item such as sourdough bread called Middlestarch, The Bun Also Rises, Dorothy Parker House Rolls, Lord of the Tea Rings, Tender is the Bite, and more. This easy way with puns becomes lighter and easier in the body of the book:

If he were a baked good, he’d be Irish soda bread. Not that I knew he was Irish; but I imagined he’d be delicious, filling, and packed with a few surprises. In the bread’s case, it was raisins, and I wondered what his would be: a shoe fetishist? Nah, he’d probably dismiss something like that as foolishness. A closest reader? Ditto.

An incredible lover? Now that I could see. He’d be thoughtful, unselfish, and get the job done — and done well — in as businesslike manner as possible.

But, if you’re at this blog, you’re probably interested in Megan’s Regencies. Let’s start with Hero of My Heart, published by Loveswept in April of this year.

Hero of My Heart is is the story of a drug-addicted marquess and a vicar’s daughter who is being sold on the block by her no-good stepbrother. Our marquess steps in, buys the girl, and decides to save her by marrying her.

If he could just get her to Scotland, just get her to shut up for long enough to realize he was doing this for her own good, for her ultimate survival, it would be fine. He could ensure her safety, give her all his unentailed funds and property, and then disappear. It would be a final act of contrition to atone for all that he had done.

In this book, Megan serves up a well-written, Regency road story with a side of angst. Her voice is elegant and true to the period and, occasionally, we see a little hint of the irreverent contemporary author.

But, if you’re longing for a Regency story with a bit more of Megan’s quirky voice, I have a treat for you. In Baring it All, a Loveswept Historical short story just out this week and What Not to Bare, a full-length historical romance from Loveswept, out in October of 2013, you will find a delightful combination of well-researched Regency Historical, with the lighter voice of Megan’s contemporary novels. No, it’s not first person and no, it doesn’t sound contemporary, but you can forget about the angst and enjoy Megan’s wonderful humor.

Baring it All is the story of a couple who have entered into an arranged betrothal. The heroine is in love with the clueless hero. The hero is… clueless.

She could almost hear the conversation: his father pronouncing at the breakfast table, “Son, you have to be married sometime, and it might as well be someone you know. Lady Violet is an excellent choice.”

To which Christian probably mumbled through his toast, “Fine, excellent. Can you pass me that notebook? I think I’ve discovered a shortcut for Pythagoras’s tetractys. Oh, and I’ll take care of that other thing next week. ” That “other thing” being asking Violet to marry him.

See? A felicitous combination of a solid grounding in the period with Megan’s witty voice. This, and What Not to Bare are a new voice for Megan that I think you’re going to love.

Posted in Reading, Risky Book Talk, Writing | Tagged Megan, Megan Frampton | 5 Replies

Effeminate heroes or drag queen heroines?

Updated on June 19, 2013 by Elena Greene

Now that I’m finally close to having a version of the balloonist story (title coming soon, I promise!) to send to my critique partners, I’m looking into yet another project. I’m considering doing an audio book version of Lady Dearing’s Masquerade.

I have a good friend who swears by audio books, since she spends a lot of time on the road. On the other hand, I have never listened to one. I’ve just never had the need. But the popularity of audio books is growing, so I’m working on getting educated.

I’ve listened to a number of samples from romance audio books, just to get an idea of how narration works. Since there’s usually just a single narrator, he or she has to do the dialogue for all the characters: hero, heroine, and everyone else, developing distinct voices for each. It seems quite the challenge.

Some authors choose to narrate their own books, but I know I’m not up to it! I can’t even do a British accent, which is one thing I know I want.

Another choice is whether it’s best in romance to have a female or male narrator.

This issue was discussed pretty thoroughly at the All About Romance blog post Speaking of Audio: Male versus Female Narrators. The question was, if one had to choose, would one “prefer to listen to an effeminate sounding hero or a drag queen heroine”?

As it turns out, with a good narrator, one can avoid either extreme.

Though I’m sure these actor/narrators are out of my reach, here are two examples I really liked:

The first is a sample from Flowers from the Storm by Laura Kinsale, narrated by Nicholas Boulton. Please listen. You will enjoy it!

As an example of a talented female narrator, here’s a sample from Lady Sophia’s Lover by Lisa Kleypas, narrated by Susan Duerden.

Do you listen to audio books? For romance, do you prefer a male or female narrator? Or does it really depend more on how the narrator handles each character?

Elena
www.elenagreene.com
www.facebook.com/ElenaGreene

Posted in Writing | Tagged Audio Books, Nicholas Boulton, Susan Duerden | 4 Replies

Excerpt from WIP

Updated on June 6, 2013 by Janet Mullany

As my buddy Pam Rosenthal once said, the Regency makes fetishists of us all and here’s an example of it. H/h in hackney. Alone. After dirty dancing. Oooh.

“You are a gentleman,” she said with a fierceness that surprised her. “You were most kind to me tonight when you hardly knew me. You—”

“Perhaps, Mrs. Raine, I had a baser motivation than you credit me with.” His eyes were narrow, sensuous, and his gaze dropped to where her cloak had fallen away at her bosom.

She would not gratify him with any sort of virtuous rearrangement of the folds of her cloak. Indeed, she was tempted to thrust the velvet further back onto her shoulders, affording him a better view of her breasts, an impulse she suppressed immediately.

Still watching her, he raised a fingertip to his lips and bit into the soft kid of his glove, drawing it from his hand with deliberate slowness. She stifled a smile as he smoothed the glove and laid it over one muscular silk-clad thigh.

“I trust the evening’s exertions have not tired you, Mr. Giordano,” she murmured.

“Thank you, ma’am. I feel extremely refreshed. I do, in fact, have an excess of energy.” Off came the other glove to join its fellow on his thigh.

Two could play at this dangerous game. She unbuttoned her glove and drew it slowly, very slowly, over her arm and wrist, and worked her fingers free, sighing at the touch of the cool night air.

His hand tightened on the kid gloves at his thigh; so he thought to unsettle her but he did not expect her to reciprocate.

He leaned forward.

“May I assist you with the other?” His bare fingers skimmed over the crook of her gloved elbow.

The carriage jolted to a halt.

Leo snatched his gloves and pulled them on again, reaching hastily for his hat.

Posted in Risky Regencies, Writing | Leave a reply

“A creaking swing door gave her warning”

Updated on May 31, 2013 by Elena Greene

Over the recent long weekend, I started a major cleanup and reorganization of my writing room. As it’s also our home office, it had gotten cluttered with all sorts of stuff, most of it not writing-related. Anyway, the task is not done (there are bookshelves and cubbies you can’t see that still need attention) but I did find my desk!

Some creative people seem to thrive in clutter, but I really don’t. Clutter makes me feel I ought to be cleaning something rather than writing. I do have a few tchotchkes for fun and inspiration, including the “lucky stone” found while walking on the beach with Gail Eastwood last summer. (She told me that stones circled by an unbroken band of a different color were said to bring good luck.)

I found this article in the Guardian about Jane Austen’s working space at Chawton.

It’s very plain and simple; check out the link for the picture. Here’s a quote from the article:

Having no room of her own, she established herself near the little-used front door, and here “she wrote upon small sheets of paper which could easily be put away, or covered with a piece of blotting paper”. A creaking swing door gave her warning when anyone was coming, and she refused to have the creak remedied.

I also like my privacy. My family has learned not to interrupt me when I’m writing and I find it difficult to work in public spaces. I can do editing there, but not the more vulnerable work of fresh writing.

I also like taking walks to clear my mind and work out plot snags. This has been true of writers for a long time. Some Regency era poets certainly did so, according to this section from The Immortal Dinner by Penelope Hughes-Hallett.

He (William Hazlitt) said that Coleridge liked to compose ‘in walking over uneven ground, or breaking through the straggling branches of a copse-wood’; but Wordsworth preferred to write whenever possible ‘walking up and down a straight gravel-walk, or in some spot where the continuity of his verse met with no collateral interruption.’

She also wrote that:

For the ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, his friend Charles Brown recalled that Keats took his chair from the breakfast table out into the garden of Wentworth Place and sat writing under a plum tree, returning indoors with a completed draft only two or three hours, a time span a little hard to credit.

I will probably never be a fast writer, but I also like working outdoors. I do that sometimes on writers’ retreats. At home, when it’s warm enough, I like working in our enclosed porch (no bugs to distract me, but big windows give the feeling of being outdoors).

How about you? Whether or not you’re a writer, are there special places or ways you like to work?

Elena
www.elenagreene.com
www.facebook.com/ElenaGreene

Posted in Writing | Tagged writing habits, writing spaces | 2 Replies

Fantasy men…

Updated on May 24, 2013 by Elena Greene

…these are not. This picture is of some of the Prince Regent’s friends, several of whom are dukes and proof that “Duke=Hawt” is an invention of Romancelandia.

I’m thinking about this in the wake of all the good discussions we’ve had related to whether historical romance, especially Regency historical romance, is dead or deserves to be. If you missed any of this conversation, here are the links:

“Sick of the Regency?” by Diane

“One day after all the editors went home, the slush pile and an abandoned marketing research plan partied hard” by Carolyn

“In the Regency but not wholly of the Regency” by Susanna

My question is: do we need more variety in our heroes?

We’ve discussed dukes and their prevalence in the genre before: “Duking it Out” (by me) and more recently, a couple of posts from Carolyn: “The Case Against Dukes” and In Defense of Dukes”.

The hero who’s a wealthy and powerful lord is an immensely popular trope in historical romance, with dukes being the epitome of that trope. A while ago, I even heard of an editor telling an author her hero must be a duke. It makes me think of Georgette Heyer’s Frederica, in which the heroine’s little brother decides it’s OK for her to marry the hero, a marquess, even if he is a “second best nobleman.” Sheesh.

Anyway, at its weakest, this trope is about the fantasy of being cared for and living a life of leisure. But don’t we want heroines who are strong women, useful rather than merely decorative?

One of Carolyn’s posts on dukes provided a good answer:

The hero is powerful in all the things that will offer a heroine safety during a time when women were dependent on men for their safety. He’s Prince Charming and his heroine is going to democratize him (emphasis mine).

The ending in which she can be a partner to him and help him use all that wealth and power wisely makes this trope satisfying, for me at least. Bring on the dukes, just write them well. But I’m very happy when writers tackle stories about different heroes, such as younger sons who have a different set of challenges.

Then there are heroes not born into the aristocracy. Rare but they exist. I know at least some of us find that type attractive.

I’m especially intrigued by Janet’s recent excerpt and by Susanna’s description of her upcoming release A Dream Defiant. Unless I’ve missed something (admittedly I haven’t read everything out there) writing black heroes is ground-breaking for the genre.

More variety in heroes ought to strengthen the genre. Not that I think anyone should force herself to write something just to be different, just that she shouldn’t feel constrained by the popular tropes if she wants to do something different.

The publishing environment supports greater variety now than ever, although that comes with other issues. The stories you want to read may be out there, but finding them can still be a challenge. Certainly we will talk about some of them here.

What do you think? Are there types of “risky” heroes would you like to see more of?

Elena
www.elenagreene.com
www.facebook.com/ElenaGreene

Posted in Reading, Writing | 5 Replies