If you’re going to the RWA conference in Washington DC (only about 10 days away now!) be sure and join the Riskies (Diane, Amanda, Carolyn, Janet, and Megan) for a drink and a “coze” before the awards ceremony on Saturday! 4:00 in Harry’s Pub at the Marriott Wardman hotel. Hope we see you there!!!
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“We hold these truths to be self-evident . . .”
Happy Official Holiday for the Fourth Of July, Even Though It’s Only The Third!
There are certain inviolable rights that we take as Life Assumptions; I’m talking, of course, about knowing–and owning as part of one’s self–certain pop culture touchstones. Recently (i.e. yesterday), I was reminded of a truth I’d suppressed: That Carolyn Jewel, our newest Risky, had never seen North And South, the BBC mini-series based on an Elizabeth Gaskell book. It’s not set in the Regency (it’s Victorian), but it is otherwise perfectly suited for a historical romance fan.
Because, you know, it’s set in a historical period and is a romance.
Anyway, Carolyn will doubtless rectify that gap in her life soon, thanks to pressure from me and many other N&S fans who are on Twitter, but it got me to thinking about pop culture assumptions, and then into the Venn Diagram of romance novel assumptions. There are some people who grew up without TV (like me), and I don’t have that common vernacular of forty-somethings who grew up on a diet of ’70s television. There are romance readers who’ve never read Nora Roberts (also like me), or Lord of Scoundrels (NOT like me), or seen Romancing the Stone (me, again), or liked Ghost (guilty), or any of a countless other shared experiences that weren’t so shared after all. 
Just like we all know Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson, and Watergate, and chia pets, and Frankie Says Relax, we all assume we’ve read Nora, or seen certain iconic romantic movies or share the same opinions and assumptions about our books (for example, I am always startled when someone doesn’t love Lord of Scoundrels; I can accept it, but it stuns me for a minute or two).
What Romance Pop Culture Touchstone have you never experienced? Which of your Romance Pop Culture Touchstones are inviolable when it comes to discussing romance with others?
And happy Truth-Holding Day!
*See how concerned Richard Armitage is that Carolyn hasn’t viewed his John Thornton-ness?
I am Everard Dominic Benedict Ashford Alexander Artichoke FitzGrennan, Duke of Hawkraven, known and feared as Satan’s Elbow, but you may address me as…Cuddles. Top Ten Things, Rules of Gentility
Part X, because this is something we write about again and again–how to find names for characters that don’t sound hideously 21st century, that somehow represent a quality of the character, and lend themselves to different forms of address. How would your hero’s mother, sister, mistress, best friend, etc. address him? (Other than as “sir,” of course.)
This is something on my mind at the moment because I’m considering changing the hero’s name in a book that’s pretty much written. For one thing, his nickname, a shortened version of his title, is a sort of fish. And yes, he’s a retired naval officer, but even so… His first name is pretty much nonedescript because no one ever uses it. Everyone close to him uses his nickname, even the heroine. As far as fish names go, I can think of better ones–Hal, short for Viscount Halibut–but there are also minor characters called Henry and Harry. Not that he has to have a fish name–I’m trying to get away from the fish motif, you understand. And it bothers me that somehow, in not having the right name, I don’t have the proper handle on the character. Eeek.
So I did a bit of research on favorite names and it’s a small but level playing field in the 18th-19th century: lots of Johns and Williams. There’s a list at thinkbabynames.com but I’m not sure how accurate it is in relation to usage then or or now, and some are specific to the US. For a list of popular English girls’ names in the eighteenth century, there’s some good information in Female Names over the Centuries.
I like old-fashioned interchangeable male/female names like Evelyn and Joslyn. (Did you know that John Wayne’s real name was Marion Michael Morrison and he adopted the nickname Duke in his youth?)
The book Bad Baby Names by Michael Sherrod and Matthew Rayback,was reviewed in the NY Times by John Tierney:
By scouring census records from 1790 to 1930, Mr. Sherrod and Mr. Rayback discovered Garage Empty, Hysteria Johnson, King Arthur, Infinity Hubbard, Please Cope, Major Slaughter, Helen Troy, several Satans and a host of colleagues to the famed Ima Hogg (including Ima Pigg, Ima Muskrat, Ima Nut and Ima Hooker).
The authors also interviewed adults today who had survived names like Candy Stohr, Cash Guy, Mary Christmas, River Jordan and Rasp Berry. All of them, even Happy Day, seemed untraumatized.
A contest that followed the review for the worst modern name came up with this winner:
Iona Knipl. The judges chose it because, in addition to being an embarrassing pun, it also set up an inevitable reply from people imagining they were being wittily original. I called up Miss Knipl and asked her how many times she had heard someone meet her and reply, “I own two.”
As for names that seem to have implicit meaning, if you read Chuck Shepherds’s News of the Weird, you’ll know that the name Wayne has unfortunate connotations and the column has regular Wayne updates.
So I won’t be renaming my hero Wayne.
Here’s a short story I wrote in 2001 at the writing site Toasted Cheese, all about the different forms of names and what they can say about characters.
The hero in A Most Lamentable Comedy is called Nicholas Congrevance, because I like the first name and his surname is a French Arthurian name I came across that seems suitably foreign and exotic. The heroine was originally named Mary, which I found a very stultifying good girl name (although her first appearance in The Rules was as a very bad girl indeed) so I changed it to Caroline, and she took off. The book is released July 23 and you can order it with free shipping from bookdepository.co.uk. And don’t forget the contest at my website!
Compulsory promotion over, what are your favorite names in fiction and in real life? Is there an interesting story behind a character’s name in one of your books?
When I started writing my October historical release, Indiscreet, I didn’t intend for the story to be set anywhere but in England. But my heroine, Sabine, had been so terribly wronged, she and her uncle (and guardian) had to leave the country. Well. Where would they go? Europe smack in the middle of the Napoleonic wars would be a bit dicey.
For some reason my brain brought up the Ottoman Empire, as mentioned in previous posts here. Syria happened to be a province at the time and Aleppo, one of its most famous cities, had a crucial location and role in the period. This city was a main stop for caravans going to the Orient or back toward the port city of Iskenderun. But Aleppo (Haleb, as it is more accurately spelled today) isn’t the only fascinating place in Syria.
The Roman city of Serjilla is one place I’d love to visit. 
Picture courtesy of traveladventures.org
Then there’s the castle of Bagras, of which Wikipedia has this to say:
Bagras or Baghras is the name of a town and nearby castle in present-day Turkey, in the Amanus Mountains.
The castle, properly known as Gastun (or Gaston, Guascon, Gastim) provided a base for a force to cover the Syrian Gates, the passes between İskenderun and Antioch. It was built in two levels around a knoll, the fortification resembling Armenian work, and with water supplied by aqueducts.[1]
It was built about 1153 by the Knights Templars[1] and held by them or by the Principality of Antioch until it was forced to capitulate to Saladin on 26 August 1189. It was retaken in 1191 by the Armenians (under Leo II),[1] and their possession of it became a major point of contention between them and the Antiochenes and Templars.
After much negotiation, it was finally returned to the Templars in 1216. According to the Armenian chronicles, it withstood a siege by the forces of Aleppo at about this time.[2] After the fall of Antioch to Baibars in 1268, the garrison lost heart, and one of the brothers deserted and presented the keys of the castle to him. The remaining defenders decided to destroy what they could and surrender the castle. Despite the loss of the castle, Hethum II of Armenia and Leo IV of Armenia soundly defeated a Mamluk raiding force in the nearby pass in 1305.
In America, we tend to think of England has having some real but the UK has nothing on a country like Syria (Some very interesting information at that link). And with vistas like this: 
There’s also the water wheels in the Syrian city of Hama. 
When Syria talks about history, don’t be surprised if they’re talking about the Iron Age. Here’s a great link to a website that had pictures of traditional costumes You probably won’t be surprised if I tell that I wasn’t very far into my research before I wanted to visit Syria.
Every once in a while (okay, probably every month!) I order a big box of books from the Edward R. Hamilton catalog. They have wonderful remaindered and discounted research-type books, and I’ve gotten some great “finds” from them. In my last shipment, one of the books was Lisa Hilton’s Mistress Peachum’s Pleasure: The Life of Lavinia, Duchess of Bolton about the actress Lavinia Fenton who found great fame on the stage and later was the mistress (and wife) of a duke, and then as a widow lost her fortune on a much younger husband. Quelle scandale! Her big role, the one that made her an overnight sensation on the London theater scene, was as Polly Peachum in John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera.
And today just happens to be John Gay’s birthday! Gay (June 30, 1685–December 4, 1732) was born in Barnstaple and was educated there at the local grammar school. On leaving school he was apprenticed to a silk mercer in London, but quickly grew bored with the business. But he did make a variety of influential literary friends, including Pope and Swift, who encouraged him in his writing endeavors. In 1715 he produced What d’ye call it? (1715), a dramatic satire that left the public so baffled by its meaning there was a Complete Key to what d’ye call it. He went on to produce a poem in 3 volumes, Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London and a comedic play, Three Hours After Marriage (which one critic called “grossly indecent without being amusing”–it was not a success). He made almost 1000 pounds on his Poems on Several Occasions, but lost it all in the South Sea Bubble.
His great success came in 1728 with The Beggar’s Opera, a ballad opera in 3 acts (ballad operas were satiric musical plays that used some of the conventions of the wildly popular Italian opera, but without recitative). It had its premier at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on Janaury 28, and ran for an unprecedented 62 consecutive performances. This original production was so popular it enable John Rich, the owner of the theater, to open the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden (a popular saying of the day had it that Beggar’s Opera made “Rich gay and Gay rich”).
It satirized the Italian opera of the day, so popular among the upper classes, but instead of grand themes and music it used well-known tunes and characters that were ordinary (not to say criminal!) people. The audience could hum along with the music, even if they had never heard the words before. The story also satirized politics (especially statesmen like Robert Walpole), poverty and injustice, notorious highwaymen of the day, and corruption at all levels of society. It made Lavinia Fenton a big star (poems were written about her and prints of her image sold out, as well as “Polly” fans and firescreens and playing cards).
The plot goes something like this. Peachum is a fence and thief-catcher, and the opera opens with him justifying his actions. He and his wife then discover that their pretty daughter Polly has secretly married the highwayman Macheath. They’re not happy, of course, but conclude that maybe the match makes sense if the new bridegroom can be killed for his money. They leave to carry out this errand (talk about nightmare in-laws!) while Polly hides her husband in a tavern, where he is surrounded by women of dubious virtue (who like to display their perfect drawing-room manners while singing about picking pockets and shoplifting). Too late, Macheath discovers that two of the “ladies” have contracted with Peachum to capture him, and off he goes to Newgate. There the jailor’s daughter, Lucy Lockit, scolds Macheath for agreeing to marry her and then running off. She wants to torture him, but he pacifies her–until Polly arrives and declares he’s her husband. Macheath tells Lucy Polly is just crazy, and Lucy helps him escape. Lucy’s father is none too happy about this, either, and joins forces with Peachum to find Macheath and split up his fortune between them.
Lucy tries to poison Polly, but then they too join forces to save Macheath when he is recaptured. Then four more women show up, claiming to be his wives (his pregnant wives!). Macheath decides he’s ready to be hanged. The narrator (the Beggar) says that in a properly moral tale he would be hanged, but the audience demands a happy ending, so Macheath is reprieved and all are invited to a dance to celebrate his wedding to Polly.
Gay tried to follow up this smash hit with a sequel, Polly, where Macheath has become a pirate and Polly has to escape from white-slavers. But Walpole had had enough of this satire, and leaned on the Lord Chamberlain to have it banned (it was first performed 50 years later). John Gay was buried in Westminster Abbey with an epitaph on his tomb by Pope, along with his own concluding couplet: “Life is a jest, and all things show it, I thought so once, and now I know it.”
Have you ever seen a production of Beggar’s Opera you really enjoyed? Or have any ideas for a book set among characters like this? (We don’t see them too often in romances, of course; our characters would be more likely to be the ones satirized! But I’m working on research for an Elizabethan story set among similar theatrical people, and having lots of fun with it…)
And, on a totally unrelated note, I’ve posted some new author photos for Laurel McKee on my own blog! I can’t decide which I like best. What do you think???
