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Category: Reading

Posts in which we talk about reading habits and preferences


I hate for this to be all about me, but . . .

let’s talk about me.

My book, A Singular Lady, comes out in stores in less than two weeks. Ten days, to be exact, but who’s counting? My editor sent me one copy of it, which is now crinkled, stained, and worn because I’ve been hauling it around to show off if anyone asks what I do besides stay at home with my son.

I’ve read a few bits of it, too, when I’ve been waiting for someone to ask me what I do besides stay at home with my son (um, did I say that? I meant waiting to save a puppy or make chocolate from scratch. That’s what I meant). It feels as if another person wrote it. I certainly don’t remember tapping out some of those words on the keyboard.

I do remember, however, when I knew I would finish writing it. I was at a music industry conference talking with a Very Important Music Journalist and I mentioned what I was doing in my theoretical spare time. I told her the bare concept–my heroine writes a column detailing her husband quest–and she replied, “Oh, Sex And The City in the Regency.”

A ha! I thought. That made it all so much clearer.

And thus was I introduced to the high concept, a buzzword that’s since been cutting a swath through writers’ conferences. The High Concept is a sentence, sometimes only a sentence fragment, that describes the book (or movie, or TV show) in a succinct, catchy way.

So when I pitched my book at those same writers’ conferences, I’d say “Sex And The City in the Regency,” and editors and agents would nod excitedly and ask me to send a partial and synopsis. Which is, in fact, how my book sold–I pitched it to an editor and an agent at the same conference and it sold to one and I got representation from the other.

So, if you’re a reader, how would you characterize your favorite book in a high concept sentence? If you’re a writer, do you think in high concept? What’s your latest project’s high concept? Do you find it easier to think in high concept, or is it just more work?

And while you’re thinking about that, I’ll be off saving a puppy.

Megan

Not long ago, I heard the good news that Laura Kinsale has completed a new book.

For anyone who doesn’t already know, Laura Kinsale writes superb historical romances, many of them featuring amazingly tortured heroes. In fact, no one does dark heroes better, as the judges of this year’s Romance Writers of America RITA contest recognized in selecting her last release, SHADOWHEART, as Best Historical Romance. My critique partners and I sometimes refer to her as the Goddess. When we analyze her scenes, as a writing exercise, we usually find ourselves genuflecting and mumbling, “We are not worthy, we are not worthy…”

OK, I could rhapsodize for a while longer, but you get the picture.

I read on her website (www.laurakinsale.com/books/lucky.html) that Laura decided to do a lighter story after all the angst and turmoil in SHADOWHEART. It’s going to be more like her other lighter book, MIDSUMMER MOON.

As presumptuous, not to say blasphemous, as it is to say this, I think I understand. Some of my earlier Regencies were on the light side, but LADY DEARING’S MASQUERADE has darker elements than I’ve tackled before (still Little League compared to SHADOWHEART, of course). I found myself suffering along with my characters, which can be a draining experience. When I started another angsty story it was like wading through an ever-deepening snowdrift. Now I’m doing a lighter one and finding that the ideas are coming a little more quickly (though first drafts are never easy). So for me, changing up was a creative necessity.

However, switching gears feels like yet another creative risk.

I think Laura Kinsale’s devoted fans will buy her next book. I certainly will. But do some readers feel cheated when an author of an angsty (or funny, or sweet, or sexy… you name it) book does something radically different in her next?

I wonder.

Elena
www.elenagreene.com

Posted in Reading, Writing | Tagged | 12 Replies


Inspiration can come at the most unexpected times—visiting a lovely, historic place, as the posts this week have demonstrated; seeing a movie with a particularly attractive (some would say hunky) man; reading a book, even if it’s not a romance (man, the ideas I’ve gotten from Dashiell Hammett’s Maltese Falcon. No, just kidding.)
Chances are, each writer’s inspiration is idiosyncratic, speaking to our most primal thoughts and images. For example, I like visiting a nice historic site, but I don’t think I’d get inspired to write because of it, even if I went to Gretna Green, found a blacksmith, and did that whole anvil thing. All five of my fellow bloggers have posted about places they found inspiring.
Me, I’d probably just look around a little and then go find where they sell the coffee.
It’s not that I don’t enjoy visiting historic places, I do; but I don’t feel my writer’s soul quiver when I’m there. For inspiration, I reach back into what I first loved about Happily Ever After stories and come up with two main sources:
A friend of my mother’s gave me The Green Fairy Book when I was born (I’m certain my parents would have preferred burp cloths, but there you go). Needless to say, it took me a couple of years after that to actually read it. And when I did, my romantic streak was born. Andrew Lang collected and compiled fairy stories from all over the world, from Europe to Africa to Asia. His translations, accompanied by H.J. Ford’s amazing art, defined, and continues to define, romance for me.

There are twelve colored fairy books in all, and I would say I’ve read them all close to a hundred times each. When my copies got too worn out and mildewed, my husband replaced them as a birthday present (and this was before the internet made thoughtful shopping so easy).
Also when I was little, my parents and I lived in New Hampshire (stick with me, I am going somewhere). Since both of them worked, I went to a neighbor’s house after school to play with her daughter and her friend’s two daughters. My babysitter was Trina Schart Hyman, a multiple Caldecott Honor Award winning illustrator. Trina’s artwork featured beautiful, independent women with long, wild hair and handsome, honorable men doing noble deeds (it also featured a guy who looked suspiciously like my dad, Trina’s martini-drinking buddy. I always got the olives.).

I read, and re-read, and re-read these stories hundreds of times. I imagined myself disguised as a boy and rescuing a prince from a dragon. I imagined myself sleeping for twenty years and being awoken by a prince. I imagined myself watching as a prince completed an impossible task set him by my father (notice the plethora of princes?) . Of course, I imagined myself as beautiful, graceful and quick-witted as these heroines, too, even though I was a chubby glasses-wearing asthmatic (I’m not chubby anymore, but don’t ever put my glasses near your cat).
And when it came time to write, I didn’t even give it a second thought. I would write a romance, a story where I knew the ending was going to be happy. Those are the stories, and images, that make me happy. That inspire me.

Even people who haven’t read “Jane Eyre” know what it’s about. They know who Mr. Rochester is, they know about the mad wife in the attic, they know the heroine is a friendless governess. I found this out after writing an alternative erotic novella based on JE (called “Reader, I Married Him,” one of the book’s most famous lines)–and I showed it to a few other writers for critique. They immediately knew what it was about whether they’d read JE or not. (In my version, btw, it’s Mr. Rochester who’s chained up in the attic.)
It’s not my favorite Bronte–that’s “Villette,” also by Charlotte Bronte, a real kick-ass book that is even more brave, puzzling, difficult, and frustrating than JE (go to my website, http://www.janetmullany.com/aboutjanet.htm, to read my thoughts on that book).
I hate the fact that JE runs away from Rochester because he wants her to become his mistress–the fact that he’s lied through his teeth to her and taken advantage of her lowly status and lack of connections doesn’t really seem to bother her as much. The sexiest part of it is not the love scenes with Rochester (which I find cringeworthy), but life at Lowood. I remember reading it during adolescence and getting all steamed up in the early part of the book and bored with the rest of it, and couldn’t really understand why. Wasn’t it Mr. R who was supposed to float my boat? Although I have to admit that first meeting with the hound and the mysterious figure on horseback has a wonderful, mythic quality to it. The first sentence of the book is extraordinary for an era that specialized in purple prose (in which Charlotte Bronte did pretty well)–blunt, atmospheric, spare:
There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.
Very fitting for a book that is about repression, choices made from necessity, and the lack of opportunity for action.
My daughter, a tough, cynical sophomore (and English major) told me she was quite shocked by JE. Why? Well, there’s all that talk about mistresses, she said. It is an extraordinarily frank book in that regard–although of course all of Mr. R’s messing about took place on the Continent, where Englishmen went to behave like, well, foreigners. That makes it all the more shocking when he sets out to entrap Jane into a bigamous marriage. As for the fate of the first Mrs. R, it does make you wonder how many mentally ill female family members were quietly tucked away under the eaves. Better than sending them to a mental hospital, of course, but the same treatment could be meted out to disobedient or eccentric wives.
JE may be the first historical regency gothic. It was published in 1847, and is placed somewhere in the regency period. There are a few hints–a reference to a novel by Walter Scott, for instance–that place the novel anywhere in the first twenty-five years of the nineteenth century. I think Bronte is being deliberately obscure–it’s set in that period when England hovered on the brink of change that came about with the 1832 reform bill. It was a period that fascinated the Victorians–much of Dickens and George Eliot is set in the late 1820s–because afterward, everything was different. She’s writing about a time that is now history, from the perspective of the present, deliberately manipulating fact to fit fiction.
So, I really can’t avoid this: JE as a great love story. Well, yes, but… There’s Jane’s capitulation and surrender (on an emotional, not physical level) to Mr. R–almost–she’s always holding herself back, playing it safe, exercising caution and control. Jane is constantly reminding us of Mr. R’s brooding physical presence, his size, and ugliness, a Beast she cannot tame. It’s only when he’s debilitated by the fire that he become safe enough to domesticate. I don’t necessarily agree with the favorite theory that it’s more than his arm and eye that got damaged in the fire (and then how on earth did Jane get pregnant–I mean, I wonder anyway, but really, that’s just dumb…), but now Jane is the strong one, the heroine who makes the choice to begin her journey with him.
Comments, anyone?
Janet

Megan’s post yesterday has me thinking about more serious subjects — and one that comes to mind is honor. I think one reason why historical romances of all types (and fantasy fiction too) have such an emotional impact on readers is the characters’ attachment to honor. This honor is not just a code of behavior, but the idea that if you do dishonorable things, it changes you, it stains you. Honorable characters may have been dishonorable in the past, but when the critical moment comes, they do what needs to be done.

Aren’t the most honorable heroes often the most romantic ones? Think of the heroes in Barbara Metzger’s “A Debt to Delia” and Gail Eastwood’s “The Lady From Spain,” or any of Carla Kelly’s or Patricia Veryan’s heroes. Think of Georgette Heyer’s “Cotillion” — Freddy has his own immutable sense of honor. Think of Maximus in the movie “Gladiator,” or of so many characters in “The Lord of the Rings.”

What do you think? Who are your favorite honorable heroes? Does their honor make them more attractive?

And does the fact that romance and fantasy novels value honor mean that they are “mere escapism,” or are they actually celebrating something very real that our cynical times tend to wrongfully ignore?

All thoughts welcome!

Cara
Cara King, www.caraking.com
MY LADY GAMESTER, Signet Regency 11/05

Posted in Reading | Tagged , | 8 Replies
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