Ooh La La!

Don’t think that romance novels are a new thing.

The first (known) examples were written during the English Renaissance by men to keep us chicky-poos in line, since we were beginning to learn how to read in noteworthy numbers.

So much for the age of enlightenment.

By the time 1740 came around, there had been some notable exceptions to that rule, but men were still having their wicked way with the genre, as evidenced by Samuel Richardson’s Pamela.

According to Wikipedia, Pamela “tells the story of a beautiful 15-year-old maidservant named Pamela Andrews, whose country landowner master, Mr. B. makes unwanted advances towards her after the death of her mother. After attempting unsuccessfully to seduce and rape her, her virtue is eventually rewarded when he sincerely proposes an equitable marriage to her.”

By the way, she says yes.

Ugh!!! On so many levels, ugh!!!

I’d blame it on the times and the gender of the author except for two things:

1.      The “chicky-poos” just a few decades later were the kind of feisty I prefer in my friends today, which is demonstrated repeatedly in Joseph Plumb Martin’s autobiographical A Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier. So much so, in fact, that it prompted modern-day editor Thomas Fleming to write that American women back then “were not the shy, fainting maidens that contemporary feminists like to imagine… The women of 1776 had imbibed quite a lot of the notions of equality that were widespread among their menfolk” (Martin, xiii), which sometimes showed in hysterically laudable ways.

a.       Seriously, these women rocked!

b.      Who knows though. Pamela was written in England by an Englishman. So maybe it was just American women who were so feisty.

2.      I once read a novel, presumably written in the 1990s, on the same basic subject as Pamela, though the heroine didn’t escape the bad guy’s “unwanted advances” and yet STILL ended up marrying the jerk of her own free will. It was supposed to be romantic. I, the reader, was supposed to be swooning over the supposedly happy union. Moreover, it was written by a woman.

Again, ugh!!! What the heck is wrong with people?

Fortunately, there’s no such nonsense in Designing America. Main-character Abigail Carpenter is way too smart for any such stupidity.

Cross that American woman, and she’ll just cross you back until you’re left marching down Hampton Road in Yorktown, Virginia, drunk, humiliated and thoroughly beaten.

My Ex-Boyfriend

Sometimes I wonder if my ex-boyfriend – let’s just call him James – will ever read my books.

Why do I wonder this? Well… mainly because he’s featured in three of them in some form or another. And since he was a smart guy, he could probably figure that little fact out.

I first introduced him in “Not So Human,” since it was the story of my life for a few pages, and James and I were then going through one of the “off” phases in our on-again-off-again romance.

You see, James was British (English-British, to be specific), and let’s face it: Long-distance relationships have a bad habit of taking their toll on all parties involved. You’d think I’d have learned that lesson the first time, but that’s a whole different story altogether.

Regardless, James became Alex, Sabrina’s once-cherished boyfriend who got all moody and broke up with her without giving her any kind of closure. Of course, James never handed me over to the faerie-hating HPAC, so he does have a one-up over Alex there; but his personality and much of his looks are otherwise spot-on.

Which means the characterization isn’t entirely flattering.

Sorry, James.

But while my ex was way too interested in protecting himself emotionally speaking, he had a lot of great qualities, hence the reason why I fell in love with him in the first place. And that’s a very good part of the reason why Alex pulls through in the end to become a much more heroic character… right up until – SPOILER ALERT – I have him shot in the head, of course.

I never wanted to shoot James. Just for the record. In fact, I went back and forth multiple times about who I was going to kill off in the end of “To Err Is Faerie:” Alex or Dallas.

I think readers would have killed me if I had offed Dallas, so I ultimately threw Alex to the wolves. And in the end, I couldn’t even go through with that, merely removing him from the picture and sending him far, far away from Sabrina.

Yet James came back anyway several books later, at least in name, in the form of Sergeant James Slasen in “Maiden America.” Makes it sound like I’m so not over him, right?

It’d be understandable if you thought that. But you’d be wrong nonetheless, since Revolutionary War heroine Abigail isn’t me in any way, shape or form. And she’s the one who falls for the enemy.

Personally, I’m so over that. Those accents are cute, sure, but they’re not worth the drama.

Abigail can keep him, with my full blessing and fondest wishes for them both.

Scottishisms: No, They’re Not Typos

Anyone who read the first two books of my Faerietales series – “Not So Human” and “To Err Is Faerie” – may very well have noticed some stuff that looks a whole lot like typos.

If you thought I screwed up and missed an edit, that’s understandable. But I swear that isn’t what happened. They’re what I call “Scottishisms.”

Way back in January – I believe for my first blog post, actually – I wrote that I had made a fool of myself with my Scottish editor, writing “British” and “English” as synonymous terms when they’re not at all.

For those of you who didn’t read that blog and who are on the same ignorant level as me, “British” means any citizen of the British Isles, i.e. the United Kingdom; whereas “English” means someone from the much more specific geographic locale of England. Makes sense, right?

Editor Alan Freeman was exceptionally helpful in pointing out that kind of blush-worthy mistake, and he’s also responsible for helping me flesh out my setting with lines like:

“The dense cityscape gave way to seedier neighborhoods, and then again to suburban high-rises until the last of even those buildings disappeared. The limousine kept rolling through flyovers and farmland, and finally into a hilly scenery that was downright stunning.”

That’s from “Not So Human” when Sabrina takes in the Scottish countryside. I had already seen that years ago, so I was able to remember the following thought without any outside help:

“Sabrina had heard people talk about the forty shades of green in Ireland, but she couldn’t imagine seeing more human versions of the color than what she saw on the thirty-minute ride.”

But Alan was the one who prompted the very next lines of:

“And when they drove into a brief rain shower, the following delicate light dancing off of both watery leaves and roadway made the journey even more picturesque.

“Staring out the tinted windows, Sabrina made an offhand comment about the strange weather, only to learn that it wasn’t strange at all. According to her driver, whose partition was down, the Scots had a saying: four seasons in one day.”

Love it, right? And there were plenty of smaller edits he also suggested, such as changing:

·         “Wouldn’t” to “wouldnae”

·         “Not” to “nae” or even “no”

·         “Brook” to “burn”

·         “Such” to “suchlike.”

Oh, and apparently the Scots don’t say “mate” like the Brits – excuse me, English – do. They’re much more likely to say “pal.”

Overall, I was pretty delighted with the changes he recommended. Though I do have to take some issue with the vernacular edits he made to the English Dr. Stewart’s dialogue in Faerietales 3: “Up in the Air” (which is out April 24 on Amazon.com).

Some of them were just downright creepy! I mean, I know I intentionally designed Stewart to be a wretched jerk, but he even had me shuddering with his new vocabulary choices.

Ugh!

Maybe there’s a reason why the English make such convincing villains. Their language alone is disturbing.

An Anglophile I’m Apparently Not

There are so many great ways to start out a blog. I’m sure of it. And as a published author and an avid writer, I should automatically have some brilliant opening line.

I’ll admit, however, that I don’t. Maybe because it’s so much easier to begin a book about fictional characters than it is to talk about myself. That’s probably what comes of being an introvert at heart. I’m a great listener, but for heaven’s sake, don’t make me carry on a conversation by myself!

So since I have a natural allergy to being the center of attention, I’ll shove one of my books-to-be into the spotlight instead.

Brilliant wallflower strategy, I know.

Last week, I sent in one of my upcoming manuscripts to an editor in Scotland. Why would an American author be sending her work to a Scottish editor, you might ask?

Easy answer: My series, Faerietales, starts out in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and quickly progresses to Glasgow, Scotland. Being the perfectionist that I am, I want to make sure to get the language and setting correct. Sure, I studied abroad in England for a semester and got to travel to both Glasgow and Edinburgh (two of my absolute favorite cities) while I was there…But let’s face it, a week’s worth of tourism does not a cultural expert make.

I’ll talk more about Faerietales – the first of which, Not So Human, is due out next month – in upcoming posts. Right now, however, I want to focus on my Scottish editor. He’s wonderful, just for the record, and I really appreciate his paid-for insights. However, I have to admit that I felt dreadfully ethnocentric when I got his edits back this weekend…

You see, in my head, there are the English, the Scottish, the Irish and the Welsh. They’re all (with the exception of the Republic of Ireland) part of the United Kingdom, also known as Great Britain. I know all of that. Seriously.

Yet somehow, when I hear “British,” I think of English-only. They’re synonymous in my book.

Apparently they shouldn’t be.

Oops.

Hopefully I can redeem myself when I send in the (potentially) last installment of the series next month.