End of Year Reflections

“Aside from velcro, time is the most mysterious substance in the universe. You can't see it or touch it, yet a plumber can charge you upwards of seventy-five dollars per hour for it, without necessarily fixing anything.”
― Dave Barry

So it's that time of year again. I don't particularly like resolutions, since I usually blow them off, but I do like to reflect on the year past. This holiday season I have been thinking a lot about time.  Time is a slippery thing. You can have too little of it, of course. For example, I didn't have enough time (or energy) to write for this blog in the last two months (sorry!). You can have too much of it: 13 hours in the car to and from my in-laws' house in Missouri is way too much time. You can waste time (two words: Candy Crush), or you can spend it wisely, doing things you value.

You can run out of time, too. My mother-in-law is 81 and in good health, but more than once this past week she hinted at her own mortality. She made sure my son had her recipe for Gingersnaps, and she gave me a pile of old photos she said she wouldn't need any more. We spent the afternoon happily going over each one, identifying all the people in them, so that the information wouldn't be lost.

I should say that she's been doing this sort of thing for a couple of years now--all the grandkids received recipe boxes last year, and books of family history a year or two before that. Her mother lived to age 96, so I certainly hope we will be enjoying her snappy wit for many more years to come. But all this talk about time and the past put me in a reflective mood, and gave me a new determination to do the things I want to do before time runs out for me, too.

This past year was great for me in many ways. Everyone I love is reasonably healthy and happy. My day job has been very successful--I am busier than I have ever been. I had a marvelous vacation in Italy with my family. My writing has received some marvelous strokes--I won two contests, and had two requests, which I will send out next week, since I have finally finished the darn synopsis. I was elected Co-Secretary of my RWA chapter. (This kind of amazes me. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that anyone actually remembers who I am, let alone will vote for me.) I joined a critique group of fabulous lady writers, which promises to be fun and rewarding on several levels.

2013 may be hard to top, but I will try. I will send out my queries and finish writing my second book. (Which may require trashing the 32K words I have already written, but that's probably the subject of another post.) I will attend the NEORWA conference in May and present a pitch to an agent (this is major--the very thought scares the crap out of me). I will post here more regularly this year. Maybe. I will upload that pile of old photos into Ancestry.com. And exercise. I should probably exercise.

Happy New Year, everyone.

In which I reveal my previously unknown tendency toward obsessive behavior

So yesterday they announced the winners of the Lone Star contest at the annual Lone Star conference. Sadly I was unable to attend, Houston being rather a long way from Cleveland for a day trip, so I have been obsessively checking my email since 1 PM yesterday even though I knew they wouldn't notify the finalists until today. This afternoon as I was watching my kid's hockey game, I got the call, which I didn't hear because ice rinks are really noisy, and because he was in goal, which makes me neurotic. So I called back while I was driving home, which was probably stupid because all I wanted to do was a happy dance. I squealed instead, which would have alarmed my son had he not been rolling his eyes at me from the back seat during the entire call.

Yes, it's true, I won in the historical category. OMG! (If you know me you may also know that I never, ever, use that expression. I have used it at least three times today, which will tell you how excited I am.)

I also got two requests for the manuscript. (OMG!) And since I still have pots more editing to do, I have no time to blog for you today. Instead I will leave you with an excerpt from the manuscript, entitled Stirring Up the Viscount:

Her eyes darted around the room as the smoke grew thicker. She spotted the cookery book her mother had given her when she married, and on an impulse she grabbed it, clasping it to her chest as she began to cough.

Theodora rushed toward the door and grabbed a light wrap off a peg. She stowed the book in her satchel and adjusted the wrap around her shoulders. She opened the door, the fire behind her beginning to roar with the added oxygen. She closed it firmly behind her and inhaled great gulps of air.

Her eyes were burning and her head ached, but she walked quickly around the house to the street. Fortunately Christopher Street was nearly deserted at this late hour. She stole a glance at the house behind her and saw smoke starting to curl around the windows. She spared Lucien a thought. It wouldn’t be long before someone noticed the smoke, and he wasn’t a particularly heavy sleeper. The chances were excellent that he would wake in time to escape.

She shook her head to clear her thoughts. There was no time for regret, and certainly no room for compassion. Not for him.  

Sweeping Away the Cobwebs

Everyone who has either lived or worked with me knows that I am a slob. I would love to say that my house is an excellent example of organized chaos, but that would be a lie--it is simply chaos. The dishes are clean, the floor is generally swept, and although I am not a candidate for an episode of Hoarders, there is quite a bit of clutter. Thank goodness my husband does the laundry, or I would be in serious trouble. 

Even so, when I woke up this morning, I stumbled around the dogs in the dark and had no idea where to find a pair of pants. They could have been in any one of a number of drawers, or in the laundry, or in a pile on top of my dresser. After flinging a few things to the floor I did manage to find a pair of capris, so I headed to the kitchen to make my tea. More chaos--unwashed dishes from yesterday's late night cookie baking, and boxes of assorted teas piled precariously on top of one another--an avalanche waiting to happen. Ignoring all of it, I dug out a teabag, opened my laptop, and started to work on my manuscript. Again, chaos--when I imported the latest Word version into WriteWay, it somehow reorganized some of the chapters, and the middle is now near the end. It will take me hours to rearrange.

This was the last straw. Silently screaming in frustration, I closed the laptop and started cleaning with a singleminded fury that I think my family found a little bit scary. I reorganized the pantry. I cleaned the kitchen. I reorganized my dresser drawers. I filled two trash bags, two recycling bags, and assembled a sizable pile of clothes for donation. I found a favorite earring I lost weeks ago. All before breakfast. Even I was scared of me. 

But eventually the storm blew itself out, and by the time I finally ate breakfast at 11:30, my house and my head were clearer (although my office is still a mess). I know that when I sit down with my MS this afternoon, I can put everything in its proper place and continue my edits. At least for me, sometimes it takes an utter breakdown to get everything reorganized and to give me a fresh perspective. 

What about you? Are you cleanliness-challenged like me? A neat freak? Or somewhere in between? What do you do to sweep away the cobwebs in your house or your head?

Writing History: Trains

A week or two ago, I spent the better part of an afternoon attempting to find out what time a particular train left King's Cross in 1866, and how much it cost to ride said train to Durham. I did find out--sort of--and added two sentences to my novel. So in honor of this tremendous accomplishment, I thought I'd focus on trains today.

I never thought all that much about trains. Growing up in Cleveland I never rode one; the Amtrak train passing through our fair city only stops here once in each direction, quite literally in the middle of the night, making it a rather inconvenient mode of travel. I did ride the rails when I was in Europe and when I lived on the East Coast, and my son was completely obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine when he was younger (a fascination I credit, in part, for his impressive vocabulary and his Ringo Starr-ish pronunciation of certain words). This, however, is the extent of my experience with trains. Nevertheless, they are one of the many reasons I set my novels in the Victorian period.

Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway J. M. W. Turner, 1844

The Victorian era saw the start of the great age of the railway in England--and just about everywhere else. The railway changed everything. More people than ever began to move. A journey that took a week in a carriage could be done in a day. Food traveled more quickly, allowing for a greater variety in diet. The middle class expanded as new industries were built, and Victoria's empire grew ever larger.

Trains were not without opposition, of course, as change never is. Tracks cut through ancestral lands, scarring the landscape and destroying valuable farmland. Towns that had grown prosperous serving on carriage routes were left empty when the trains went through other villages. There is an interesting article comparing modern railway opposition to that of over a century before; the more things change, the more they stay the same.

But railways were wondrous as well. Jack Simmons, in his 1991 book The Victorian Railway, quotes the letter of a Wiltshire clergyman, who in 1841 took his parish clerk to watch the passage of one of the first trains along the Great Western main line: "The novelty of the sight, the strangeness of the sounds, the marvellous velocity with which engine, tender, carriages, and trucks disappeared, the dense columns of sulphurous smoke, were altogether too much for the reason of my simple dominie, and he fell prostrate on the bank-side as if he had been smitten by a thunderbolt! When he had recovered his feet, his brain still reeled, his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and he stood aghast, unutterable amazement stamped upon his face. It must have been quite five minutes before he could speak, and when he did it was in the tone of a Jeremiah. 'Well, Sir, that was a sight to have seen; but one I never care to see again! How much longer shall knowledge be allowed to go on increasing?'" [Simmons, The Victorian Railway, pp. 15-16.]

The railway blurred societal boundaries more than ever before, forcing the societal elite to mingle with the lower echelons, but it was also the railway that gave us the more concrete distinctions between classes--first, second, and third.

The Railway Station, William Powell Frith, 1860

Railway accidents were not uncommon, although as with air vs. car travel today, the likelihood of death or injury when traveling by train was less than than that for coach travel. Charles Dickens was in the Staplehurst rail crash of June 1865, in which ten people died. He wrote a rather harrowing account of the aftermath in a letter to a friend. It was only after he had helped to rescue passengers and aid the wounded that he returned to the train for his manuscript, Our Mutual Friend.

Dickens was by turns fascinated, frightened, and disgusted by railways, and he featured them in his writing more than any other Victorian era writer. In a short story entitled "Mugby Junction," written in 1866 after an experience at the railway station in Rugby, he wrote,

A place replete with shadowy shapes, this Mugby Junction in the black hours of the four-and-twenty.  Mysterious goods trains, covered with palls and gliding on like vast weird funerals, conveying themselves guiltily away from the presence of the few lighted lamps, as if their freight had come to a secret and unlawful end.  Half miles of coal pursuing in a Detective manner, following when they lead, stopping when they stop, backing when they back.  Red hot embers showering out upon the ground, down this dark avenue, and down the other, as if torturing fires were being raked clear; concurrently, shrieks and groans and grinds invading the ear, as if the tortured were at the height of their suffering.  Iron-barred cages full of cattle jangling by midway, the drooping beasts with horns entangled, eyes frozen with terror, and mouths too: at least they have long icicles (or what seem so) hanging from their lips.  Unknown languages in the air, conspiring in red, green, and white characters.  An earthquake accompanied with thunder and lightning, going up express to London.

Now, all quiet, all rusty, wind and rain in possession, lamps extinguished, Mugby Junction dead and indistinct, with its robe drawn over its head, like Cæsar.  Now, too, as the belated traveller plodded up and down, a shadowy train went by him in the gloom which was no other than the train of a life.  From whatsoever intangible deep cutting or dark tunnel it emerged, here it came, unsummoned and unannounced, stealing upon him and passing away into obscurity.  Here, mournfully went by, a child who had never had a childhood or known a parent, inseparable from a youth with a bitter sense of his namelessness, coupled to a man the enforced business of whose best years had been distasteful and oppressive, linked to an ungrateful friend, dragging after him a woman once beloved.  Attendant, with many a clank and wrench, were lumbering cares, dark meditations, huge dim disappointments, monotonous years, a long jarring line of the discords of a solitary and unhappy existence.

And because I am apparently in a literary mood today, I give you a contrasting view, that of Thomas Hardy in his poem "The Waiting Room," written perhaps 50 years later:

On a morning sick as the day of doom
   With the drizzling gray
   Of an English May,
There were few in the railway waiting-room.
About its walls were framed and varnished
Pictures of liners, fly-blown, tarnished.
The table bore a Testament
For travellers' reading, if suchwise bent.


      I read it on and on,
   And, thronging the Gospel of Saint John,
   Were figures--additions, multiplications -
By some one scrawled, with sundry emendations;
      Not scoffingly designed,
      But with an absent mind, -
   Plainly a bagman's counts of cost,
   What he had profited, what lost;
And whilst I wondered if there could have been
      Any particle of a soul
      In that poor man at all,

   To cypher rates of wage
   Upon that printed page,
   There joined in the charmless scene
And stood over me and the scribbled book
   (To lend the hour's mean hue
   A smear of tragedy too)
A soldier and wife, with haggard look
Subdued to stone by strong endeavour;
   And then I heard
   From a casual word
They were parting as they believed for ever.

   But next there came
   Like the eastern flame
Of some high altar, children--a pair -
Who laughed at the fly-blown pictures there.
"Here are the lovely ships that we,
Mother, are by and by going to see!
When we get there it's 'most sure to be fine,
And the band will play, and the sun will shine!"

It rained on the skylight with a din
As we waited and still no train came in;
But the words of the child in the squalid room
Had spread a glory through the gloom.

Googling "railway history" will give you 150 million results, so here are just a few of the better ones:
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rail_transport#Britain
The Railways Archive: http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/
National Railway Museum: http://www.nrm.org.uk/

Also check out Great British Railway Journeys, a BBC TV series which uses the 1863 Bradshaw's Handbook to explore Britain, comparing and contrasting modern times with the Victorian features described in the book. You can find many of the episodes on YouTube. Bradshaw's Handbook is available from Amazon, but consider buying a magnifying glass at the same time--the print is tiny!

If you can find it, do read (okay, skim--it's over 375 pages) The Victorian Railway for a fascinating overview of the impact on railways in Victorian society.

If you've read this far, thanks. I got a bit carried away. . . 

Marin

Contest News!

Awhile back I gave you my musings on contests. I still agree with everything I said in that post, but now my perspective is slightly different. I mentioned that I entered three contests this past spring. In the first, which was NEORWA's Cleveland Rocks Romance contest, I didn't come close to being a finalist. However, one of the judges gave me some fabulous feedback which I used to make some changes that greatly improved the manuscript.

The second was the Romancing the Lakes contest, which is a fairly new one; I think this was its first year. Wonder of wonders, I was one of five finalists in the Historical category.  I didn't dare hope I would be in the top three, let alone win, but I did. It was the first real validation that my writing does not suck. For a newbie, that is a tremendously good feeling.

The third was the well-respected Lone Star contest, sponsored by the very first chapter of RWA. For the last two weeks, my husband and I have been doing a cleanse, which means a lot of cooking for me and no caffeine, alcohol, sugar, wheat, or anything else that's fun to eat. Last Saturday, I was feeling crabby. So crabby, in fact, that I was in the middle of making gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free chocolate cookies (which rock, by the way--here's the recipe) to cheer myself up, when I got The Call. The call that told me I was a finalist. (Actually, it was three calls, since I was too crabby to answer the phone or check my voice mail the first two times.)

I spent the last week editing and polishing the first four chapters of my book. I will admit I was thoroughly tired of them by the time I sent the entry back to the category coordinator last evening, so I am ready to move on and polish the rest. In the spirit of eternal optimism, which is generally a stranger to me, I will have it ready to submit by the time the winners are announced in October, just in case.

So now it's back to work for me, and time for you to share your thoughts on contests. Do you enter them? Have you won?

Marin

Reality in Historical Romance

One of the blogs I follow is Hearts Through History, which features some marvelous posts on history in general, as well as historical romance in particular.  A recent post by Merry Farmer caught my eye, about historical body image. The concept of skinny, as she notes, is purely a 20th century notion, but most heroines in historical romance are portrayed as the young skinny girls of our current reality, rather than the curvy young women their real-life counterparts actually were.  Take a look at this piece of "genteel erotica" from 1886 and you'll see what I mean:

Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1886-female-bathers-No4-nude.jpg

Anyway, Merry's blog led me to another I hadn't seen before: Rakes, Rogues, & Romance by Nancy Goodman. How real, she asked in a recent post, do we want our romance? Do we read it purely to escape the reality of our not particularly romantic lives, or do we want something else?

Personally, I like some realism. I want to see the heroine lift her skirts a bit to step over the disgusting muck that filled London streets prior to the end of the 19th century. I want her to wrinkle her nose when she gets a whiff of the Thames as the wind shifts. I want to see the household staff wash off the windows, again, the soot that constantly covers them. In my mind, such snippets of historical fact add much to the setting, but don't detract from the romance.

Perhaps it is my advancing age, but I am a bit tired of the virginal teen heroine, who loses her maidenhead to the more worldly but gentle hero and almost always has an earth-moving orgasm on the first try. (No comment on the realism of that.) I have read many romances which feature this type of heroine, and have enjoyed them, but nowadays I find I like my heroines grittier, with more life experience before the first page. To me, they are much more real, and these are the heroines I like to write about.

However, as in most things in life, balance is important. I do understand the need to read as an escape from reality--it is very often that impulse which leads me to pick up a book. I read a lot of different types of fiction, but I open a romance when I want to be assured of a happy ending. It isn't always very realistic, but it is usually immensely satisfying.

So if you read romance, how do you feel about realism? How much is too much?

Inspiration, Italian Style

So I spent the last two weeks in Italy. It was one of those trip-of-a-lifetime sorts of vacations, where we packed in just about every major tourist site, and quite a few minor ones. My husband is a classicist, so there was a heavy emphasis on Roman ruins--Colosseum, Forum, Villa Adriana, Pompeii, Herculaneum, etc.--but we also spent some time in Venice and Florence.

I visited Italy once before, in college. I had an unpleasant experience there and so cut my trip short. Perhaps as a result, I have never had any particular interest in Italy, other than the food, anyway. In getting ready for this trip, though, an idea for a story stuck itself into my head, and so while I was there I spent a lot of time taking crazy pictures that might at some point be inspiring,

Mt. Vesuvius

or useful,

Scale model of ancient Rome

or just amusing.

I have no idea what this is, but there were about a dozen of them in a row, holding up display cases at the Naples Museum.

I have written about inspiration before--for some reason I find the topic endlessly fascinating. I think the interesting thing about this trip, is that I didn't find it particularly inspiring, although I expected to. Instead my sojourn in Italy was more about taking it all in--soaking up atmosphere, smelling the particular odors of each place we visited (for as Eleanor Lavish said, every city does indeed have its own smell), tasting the food, feeling the unrelenting heat of the Italian sun, and washing off the dust of ruins built nearly 2,000 years before.  I spent more time than I ever have looking at things through a writer's eyes.

Perhaps that is a kind of inspiration too.

Germinating the idea seed

 

When I first started writing one of the many things that made me nervous was that I would run out of things to write about. The fear that I had only one story in me made me hang on for far too long to a manuscript that should have been stuffed under the bed.

I recently committed myself to finishing one manuscript before I can work on the next. Perversely, I now have tons of ideas gathering in my brain, each rather desperate to be turned into the next book. Or the one after that. Almost everywhere I go I find a new idea to plant in my head, and I have to rush home and open a new book in WriteWay to get it down before I forget it. At the same time, I have to stop myself from jumping on the Internet to do research. It's very distracting.

Famous authors are always asked in interviews where they get their ideas.  I used to think that was an interesting question, but now I know it doesn't really matter. Ideas are everywhere. It's how a writer nurtures them that counts.

So I am not going to ask how you get your ideas. Instead I'll ask: what is the first thing you do to make that idea seed grow?

Fighting Fear

Once upon a time, I knew a guy who spent three years in law school, but when it came time to take that last class to graduate, he just didn't bother. His employer gave him time off to study for and take the bar exam, but although he took the time, he never took the exam. Because, of course, he couldn't. He was a smart guy, very knowledgeable in the field, but he never took those final steps to become a lawyer. I always wondered why. My ten year old just read this paragraph over my shoulder and answered the question for me: "I think he was afraid."

I think so too. You can't be called a bad lawyer if you never finish law school. And you can't be called a bad writer if you never finish a book.

I typed "The End" in my manuscript seven months ago. I need to add a couple of scenes and it requires some serious editing, but the bones are all there.  And yet I cannot seem to finish it. I even started another book, and although that is going well, I am being haunted by the first one.

Generally speaking, I am not a risk-taker; I never have been. When I graduated from college, I cried for two days because for the first time in my life I had no idea what to do next. When I started my own law firm I was so freaked out I didn't eat for three weeks and lost about 15 pounds.  Both involved leaving a safe cocoon of support and certainty. To me, a manuscript is a bit like that. When it's in your own head or on your own laptop, it's safe and secure. You can imagine that it will be perfect, that everyone will love it.

So I suppose it's understandable, if pathetic, that the idea of pitching and querying the book scares the crap out of me. I squandered a recent opportunity to pitch at the NEORWA conference, and didn't participate in a query workshop I took a few weeks ago. I told myself it was because the book wasn't ready, but I was lying: the truth is that I was terrified.

This morning as I had both the old and the new manuscripts open on my laptop, I thought about that guy who never finished law school, who as far as I know still works in a cubicle doing the same thing every day. I thought about how I went abroad for my junior year and it was an unforgettable experience that inspires me to this day. I thought about how I left my cushy life for law school, and I graduated cum laude. I thought about how I started my own firm, and it's doing fine. And I realized that I actually am a risk taker when it counts.

Eleanor Roosevelt reportedly said, "Do one thing every day that scares you." So every day I will do something scary, or at least a little difficult. I will write a logline, a pitch, and a query letter. I will shelve the new MS until I finish the old one. And then I will send my baby out into the world.


 

On the importance of recycling

I have nothing to say today. Actually, not quite true; I have a lot to say, but it's in a new manuscript. I started this one Monday in a FastDraft I'm doing with some of the lovely ladies from NEORWA. I am woefully behind, so I am going to get back to it. My current scene features the hero and his long-lost sister, reunited, enjoying a picnic in a garden.

So, I will leave you with a recycled post on gardens that I originally wrote about this time last year, for the New Kids on the Writers Block.

(Just as an update, our front yard is now gorgeous, and the rose bushes are HUGE.)

Writing History: Gardens

Over the past two weeks, our front yard has been getting a makeover.  We hired landscapers to rip out EVERYthing--trees, shrubs, 6-ft tall hedge from hell, grass, ground cover, front walk and steps.  For over a week we waited for all the remaining foliage to die. (The neighbors thought we were completely nuts.  Every time someone walked by, we would hear wafting through the open window, "Oh my God, they tore out everything!  Do you think they are going to leave it this way?"  Um, no.)  We have now planted four ornamental trees, some ornamental grasses, roses, two tiny, well-mannered hedges, some lilies, and lots and lots of grass, which all require lots and lots of water.

When researching some possibilities for the plants to put in the front yard, I came across many, many references to English gardens.   From the tiniest cottage garden to the most elaborate country house landscape, the English have been renowned for centuries for their garden design.  Which got me thinking: gardens are marvelous additions to novels.  They evoke scents--lush roses, heady lavender, sweet lilac--and vivid color.  They feature marvelous little alcoves for a romantic tryst, or a secluded bower for intrigue.   They provide a peaceful backdrop for a solitary walk, or a tree for a mischievous heroine to climb.  So today I thought I'd take a little walk through the history of English gardens. 

Over the years, styles of English gardens changed markedly.  During the medieval period, gardens were typically enclosed by walls, and grew useful plants--herbs for cooking and medicine.  They often had a mound inside, which was used to look outside the walls while remaining safely within.  There is a lovely drawing of a medieval garden, as well as a discussion of what they may have looked like, here.

Some other resources for medieval gardens include:

http://www.godecookery.com/mtales/mtales16.htm

McLean, Teresa.  Medieval English Gardens (Viking, 1981).

National Geographic story  about a 2003 discovery of the remains of an unusual medieval garden at Whittington Castle.

During the Renaissance period, gardens were also enclosed, but they were much more elaborate. In the Tudor era, gardens were heavily influenced by Italianate style.  The "knot garden" was developed during this period.  Hampton Court Palace has several reconstructed Tudor-era gardens, including a classic knot garden.

The Stuarts, on the other hand, were into French gardens. These often featured a broad avenue  flanked by rectangular parterres made of formal low hedges.

If you are interested in learning more about gardens of the Renaissance era, don't bother Googling "Tudor Gardens" or "Renaissance Gardens," as that leads to an astonishing number of urban American apartment complexes and nursing homes, few of which seem to have gardens.  Instead, try searching on gardenvisit.com.

Badminton House and landscape garden, Gloucestershire.
From Morris's Country Seats (1880). Source: Wikipedia.

The eighteenth century saw a shift to more natural looking landscapes.  Achieving this natural look apparently involved removing everything that was in place (kind of like my yard), and starting from scratch.  Every feature, including lakes, was then engineered to look as "natural" as possible.

Lancelot "Capability" Brown was the most sought-after landscape designer of the day.  Brown is reputed to have designed over 170 gardens.  For a biography of Brown and links to gardens still in existence today, go to http://www.britainexpress.com/History/bio/brown.htm. 

Gardens in the Victorian period went a little nuts, with lots of flowers and exotic colors, and formal and informal styles mixed together.  There are some wonderful photos at gardenvisit.com, which I am afraid to re-post here, due to copyright issues.

This period also saw the creation of a large number of public parks, including Derby Arboretum (reputed to be the first), Crystal Palace Park in London, and Birkenhead Park, which is said to have influenced Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of New York's Central Park.  

Some general resources on the history of English gardens, in no particular order:

*Great quick resource, and the starting point for this post: http://www.britainexpress.com/History/english-gardens.htm.

*Turner, Tom.  Garden Design in the British Isles: History and styles since 1650. (1986?)

*The GardenDesign website has a great bibliography of books on garden design and landscaping history.

*Country Life's website also has a wonderful post featuring links to the best sites for garden history, as well as some wonderful garden and landscape photos from its own archives.

*GoogleBooks has some wonderful free eBooks on English gardens written in the early 20th century.

*The best source I found during this little adventure was GardenVisit.com.   Books, articles, photos--pretty much anything you might want to know about the history of gardens. 

Finally, if you are a visual learner, check out http://www.gardenvisit.com/history_theory/garden_landscape_design_articles/historic_design_styles for illustrations of garden styles through history.

I hope you've enjoyed strolling through the garden with me.  If you have any favorite garden resources, please do share!

Marin

Writing Contests

This post is sort of an update of a piece I wrote last year over on New Kids on the Writers Block, when I was in a contest frenzy. I've been in contest mode this spring as well, serving as a category coordinator and a backup judge for the Cleveland Rocks Romance Contest, and as a judge for another RWA chapter contest. Serving as Category Coordinator was a ton of work but both fun and instructive--I certainly have a new respect for the amount of effort that goes into organizing a quality contest, and NEORWA's contest certainly does rock.

I have also entered three contests this spring. I sent off my last entry just last night, feverishly editing and polishing until nearly 11 pm, just an hour before the deadline (apparently I thrive on deadlines, which encourages my tendency toward procrastination more than you might think). I submitted the same work to each. The first entry was pretty weak, since no eyes but mine had ever looked at it. The judges were kind; they gave me decent scores and pointed out some "duh" moments in the manuscript.  The second entry was more polished than the first--still waiting on that one--and the third entry was better still. (I hope; my eyes were crossing near the end and I probably made some huge mistake.)  Keep your fingers crossed for me, please!

Contests are wonderful ways to get your manuscript in front of unbiased judges, although you do, admittedly, have to pay for the privilege. Most contests include some combination of published and not-yet-published authors in the first round; the best contests train their judges. The benefits of a contest are tangible--you receive objective, generally constructive criticism,  as well as pats on the back for the things you do well. If you have submitted a work you've just started and want to get some feedback, contests are wonderful tools. If you are a finalist, your work is reviewed by an agent or editor who is actively acquiring manuscripts. If you win, you seldom gain much in a material sense, but you receive bragging rights and sometimes even a request for a full or partial manuscript from an editor/agent. A contest win can even lead to a book contract, although I suspect that happens infrequently.

Just as an aside, if you are interested in entering a contest or two, check out Stephie Smith's contest chart first--there is so much good information I can't even imagine how much work it must be to maintain it.  It has a romance bent, but there are more general contests listed as well. Alexa Bourne also teaches a wonderful class on the ins and outs of contests. She has one coming up in August; check out her website. Her Killer Openings class is great too.

Before you enter, know that there are downsides to contests too, at least in my opinion. First, the costs can add up if you enter too many, and the return on investment probably isn't that great. Second, I think that being a contest junkie can give you a fabulous first 25 pages, but the rest of your MS can suffer from a lack of attention. (This is certainly true for me. The first five chapters of my current WIP have been edited to death, but I haven't even touched the end yet.) Finally, as with any criticism of your writing, you need to take the judges' comments with a grain of salt. Some of them, as painful as it will be to admit it, are spot on and if you take the judge's advice your writing will be better. Other comments will make you wonder whether the judge was commenting on the right entry. Still others will make a valid point, but you will disagree with varying degrees of outrage.

In my opinion, contests have great merit, but I tend to look at them as a bit of a gamble: it's important to know when to quit. I am done with contests for the time being, but I am interested to hear from you. Do you enter contests? If not, why not? What have been your experiences?  And have you ever sold a book as a result?

Marin

Going to the Dogs

Sneaky Pete & his well-ordered bone collection

We recently added a puppy to our household. Sneaky Pete is a standard poodle of indeterminate age. He might be nine months, he might be 18 months; he was a rescue, so who knows?  He and our other dog, Larry, also a poodle but getting on in years, play wonderfully well together. Larry is thoughtfully teaching Pete to bark.
 

Larry

I adore dogs (I like cats too, but they make me wheeze) and without really thinking about it feature at least one in my WIP, whatever it is. So because my life is currently invaded by dogs--at this very moment they are wrestling next to my chair--I thought I'd dedicate this post to historical canine companions.



Dogs have always been companions to  aristocrats, from the lady's lap dog . . .

Lady with a Lap Dog, Lorenzo Costa, c. 1651. Source: Wikimedia Commons

 



















to the lord's labrador. . .

Thomas Gage, 1st Viscount Gage and his horse, James Seymour, 1743.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

 
pet dogs were considered a sign of status and wealth.

The British Royal Family has been portrayed with dogs in portraits since the 17th century, from the King Charles Spaniel, to Queen Victoria's border collie, to Queen Elizabeth II's corgis. Check out this post for some photos of royal pets.




                        

George

Our dearly departed George, Pete's predecessor, was a representative of an ancient and aristocratic breed. In him you could easily see how Dalmatians were bred to run alongside carriages, and to guard them when they stopped to rest. In his younger days George could run for long distances without tiring (this was particularly problematic when he escaped the back yard), and I have never seen a more dedicated protector of his people. The exact origin of the breed is disputed, but according to various sources spotted dogs resembling the Dalmatian were found depicted in Egyptian tomb paintings. A Dalmatian were depicted in a painting alongside the Dauphin of France, and the breed was "greatly prized in Georgian times as a living ornament and coaching accessory."

Painting by T. Goetz, 1853. Source: Wikimedia Commons

In addition to serving as pets and "ornaments," dogs were used for sport. Foxhounds, especially, were bred in Europe to hunt foxes.  The English foxhound was scientifically bred by members of the English aristocracy. Other "sporting" dogs included greyhounds, bulldogs, and mastiffs; the latter two were bred for fighting.

A Couple of Foxhounds with a Terrier, the property of Lord Henry Bentinck, W. Barraud, c. 1845.Source: Wikimedia Commons                      

 

 Dogs were also used in other ways for hunting: English pointers, poodles, and spaniels were bred to retrieve fallen game after shooting. Poodles ultimately left their usefulness behind and became companions to the royal houses of France.

Self-portrait in oriental attire with poodle. Rembrandt, c. 1631.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

I could keep going, but I won't. You can find marvelous posts on dogs in history online --check out http://thedustyvictorian.blogspot.com/2011/04/victorian-dogs.html, http://sniffingthepast.wordpress.com, http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/schwartz-dog.html,  http://www.npr.org/2011/11/08/142100653/how-dogs-evolved-into-our-best-friends, and many, many more.

Here's to our best friends.

Note to self. . .

. . . do not introduce a new blog and then vanish for three months.

Have you ever had one of those periods in your life when it was all you could do to keep yourself employed and you and your family fed, clothed, and sheltered? And anything else--house cleaning, regular showering, writing--was simply more than you were capable of doing? That was me the last three months. As is usual for me (and for many women, I imagine) I let my obligations to everyone else so consume my energies that there was nothing left for me. 
 

Perhaps it was the season, because with the blooming of flowers and the warming temperatures I am feeling energized. This week I resumed editing my WIP--the one I finished last November and haven't touched since March--and started outlining the next one. I am heading off to my very first writers' conference this weekend, and I am stoked: Twenty-four hours with other writers, soaking up inspiration and information, and undoubtedly a cocktail or two. I'm not ready to pitch yet, mostly because the very notion scares the crap out of me, but I will watch and learn as others put themselves out there.  Then I will return home, ready to finish this book, start querying, and write a blog post more than once per quarter. 

 
May the changing seasons energize you too.

Marin

Writing History: Books

The other day I was reading a historical romance set in the Victorian era, and one of the characters was reading The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot. After I checked to make sure the book had actually been published by the time the book was set (because I do that sort of thing), it got me thinking about books in fiction. In historical romance, female characters do a lot of reading, presumably because most of them come from the upper classes and they don't have much else to do.

In fact, however, portraying readers in Victorian fiction is historically accurate: a lot of people, in every class, did a lot of reading. According to the British Library, almost 60,000 works of fiction were published during the Victorian period. These included novels, "yellowbacks" , and "penny dreadfuls." The British public, particularly women, were also voracious readers of magazines, 125,000 different titles of which were published during the 19th century. 

In the early days of the period, novels were either published in serial form in magazines--many of Dickens' works first appeared this way--or in three volume sets. After that, the books were published in a single 6-shilling volume, then, sometimes, as a yellowback. Books could be obtained at bookshops, railway station book stalls, and circulating libraries.

Sense and Sensibility, 1870

Yellowbacks were precursors to today's mass-market paperbacks, published in cheap bindings with a characteristic yellow cover, sold in railway station book stalls.  They included such beloved classics as Austen's Sense and Sensibility and Mrs. Gaskell's Ruth, as well some rather less well-known works, such as Nora's Love Test: A Novel and Matrimonial Shipwrecks, or, Mere Human Nature.  Emory University has digitized over 1,200 of these gems, which can be downloaded for free, thus ensuring that I will probably get nothing else done this weekend. There is an interesting blog featuring just about everything you'd ever want to know about yellowbacks at http://yellowbacks.wordpress.com/.

Varney the Vampire,1847.

Penny dreadfuls were cheaply made works of serial fiction, intended for the working classes.  They were often violent and bloody, meant to titillate and hook the reader. Titles included such marvels as Varney the Vampire, or, The Feast of Blood. A Romance, which was published in 109 installments. The tale of Sweeney Todd started life as a penny dreadful entitled, oddly, The String of Pearls.

There is great blog post on penny dreadfuls at http://vichist.blogspot.com/2008/11/penny-dreadfuls.html, featuring a marvelous defense of the form by G.K. Chesterton, who declared that any “literature that represents our life as dangerous and startling is truer than any literature that represents it as dubious and languid. For life is a fight and is not a conversation.”

Hello!

Yes, I've taken the plunge, and have started my own blog. I have been part of a group blog (New Kids on the Writer's Block) for a year or so, but have been feeling the need to spread my wings a bit, so here I am.  I am a new writer with no published work to my credit, unless you count a few law-related articles (which I don't). Since I started writing seriously about two years ago, I have spent more time learning about how to write than actually writing, but I figure everyone needs to start somewhere.

I write historical romance set in Victorian England.  My husband told me the other day that he thinks I like research more than writing.  It is true I love exploring the little factoids that bring history to life, but I love the writing part too--it's just a lot harder.

This blog explores my writing journey, including those little historical detours that fascinate and distract me. Thanks for joining me for the ride.