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.

The French Thought WHAT About Philadelphia Women?

I’m almost done conducting my research for Maiden America II: Designing America, and it’s been just as fascinating as my previous expedition into early U.S. history. Here’s a few of the more interesting tidbits, which may or may not make it into the story:

·         Some of the French wondered whether Philadelphia women were lesbians, since they had an “odd” tendency to visit female friends for days at a time.

·         According to one New England patriot who served almost the entire length of the war and therefore saw just about every state, the prettiest girls in the U.S. were those found in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

·         After the French openly declared war on Great Britain (it had been secretly giving the States funding before), it went about taking everything it could from its rival. In fact, the only thing that saved the island nation from direct attack was bad weather.

·         With that said, most the British and Americans over in the U.S. agreed that the weather was on the locals’ side.

·         Most American soldiers were never really compensated for their efforts. At the end of the war, they were discharged with practically worthless paper notes for three months’ pay and permission to keep their guns. That was it.

·         Legend has it that bayonets were first used in seventeenth-century Spain (today’s Bayonne, France) after a desperate soldier out of ammunition jammed his knife into his musket’s muzzle for the hand-to-hand fighting he knew was coming. A hundred or so years later, the British were using the weapon to full advantage, sending many an American troop running for safety to avoid being impaled.

·         The British navy wasn’t quite so daring as its army, with Admiral Thomas Graves avoiding fights at all cost. His laziness played a huge part in the American’s victory at Yorktown.

·         Another huge part in why that siege played out how it did was because of poor communication and bickering among the military leaders.

·         American women were quite the feisty little things back then. Joseph Plumb Martin recorded how he and his fellow soldiers would try to commandeer horses from the locals, but were often thwarted by young ladies who would steal the horses back, taunt the men for not properly intimidating them into submission, and then invite them over for dinner just as nice as you please.

·         The soldiers did more starving then fighting.

·         James Armistead Lafayette was an American slave who spied on the British, even though they would have liberated him in a heartbeat for deserting his master.

·         During almost the entirety of the war, New York City was filled with Tories entertaining the enemy.

That’s just a smidgen of what I’ve learned. I still have one and a half research books to get through, plus my trip to Colonial Williamsburg at the end of the month. After that, it’s time to put all of this intriguing information into America and Abigail Carpenter’s continuing saga.

Can’t wait! 'Cause let me tell you... This is gonna be good.

What I Got Out of Being in a Carefully Crafted Harem

Normally, I’m difficult to phase emotionally. To a casual observer, I often come across as either a sweetie pie or a tongue-tied spaz case; but behind that cover, my snark stays undefeated.

Try treating me like I’m stupid, my opinion isn’t valid, or I’m just your next piece of you-know-what. It doesn’t affect me. Because you’ve already displayed how little I should care about your opinion.

Not to say I don’t get angry, sad, irritated or bewildered. I’m not a drone, after all. But off the top of my head, I can honestly think of just two men who got past those defenses to make me feel like trash: my creepy ex-coworker, Robert K., and my manipulative ex-friend, Damon W.

I already turned the former into a character in Maiden America, uncreatively naming him Lieutenant Robert Caverish. I also gave him the same disconcerting blue eyes, long lashes and bad habit of staring at his desired object until she wanted to disappear into the floor.

Ew. Yet as much as I can’t say the experience was worth it, I did enjoy getting back at him through my storyline.

These days, I’m getting the chance to do the same to Damon in the so-far unnamed and unfinished Faerietales Book #4. And yes, I'm loving it.

You see, I met Damon at college, where I quickly came to consider him as the big brother I’d never had but always wanted. He teased me, made me laugh, taught me drinking games and naughty words, but still gave a completely convincing impression that he cared about me.

Until the day he found out I fell for someone. My British boy, to be exact.

Unbeknownst to me, I had become part of Damon’s carefully crafted harem of women he used to make himself feel better about life. I belonged to him; and as such, I wasn’t allowed to date anyone else. Which he let me know by trying to seduce me.

He never did. Never even got a kiss. I take great pride in the fact that I'm one of the few women on this planet Damon tried and failed with. But he did manage to make me feel helpless and small and uncertain… for months on end.

If you asked me why I didn't dump him as a friend right on the spot, I'd have to tell you that he got into my head enough that I made excuses for him. I concluded that he was more damaged than I'd originally realized, that it was a one-time screw-up on his part, that he wasn't really "like that." So I have plenty more Damon stories to tell after that low point in life, not that they fit into Sabrina's faerietale at all.

What does fit in, however, is the larger theme of him being one of the greatest emotional con-artists you’ve never heard of.

Until you read Book #4, of course.

Can’t wait ‘til it’s done!

Sabrina Is As Human As a Faerie Can Be: A Rant Against Hollywood-Style Feminism

I’m going to go off on a writer’s rant for today’s blogpost about how I really can’t stand Hollywood sometimes, especially when it comes to how it portrays women.

No, I’m not going to accuse it of baring all our assets all the time, turning us into a closed box of bedroom fantasy characters. Though that’s true too.

I’m actually going to take issue with how kick-derriere those bedroom-fantasy heroines are these days. They’re physically, emotionally, psychologically and intellectually capable of handling just about anything that comes their way.

In other words, they’re not really human. They’re false portrayals of what feminism can be, giving women everywhere the idea that we can constantly bend a boardroom of hostile coworkers to our will, turn the tables on four – count them: four – bad guys who have us trussed up in an old warehouse without messing up a single hair on our head, and manage our personal lives with the casual cool of… well… someone who has the patent out on being casually cool.

Clearly, I’m running low on awesome metaphors today. I suppose that means I don’t qualify for Hollywood-style feminism. Which just happens to be my point: I’m usually a confident woman, but I do have my limits. There’s no way I can take on everything under the sun.

In writing her dark and twisted novels, including run-away bestseller “Gone Girl,” Gillian Flynn had this to say about how she portrays women: “Isn’t it time to acknowledge the ugly side? I’ve grown quite weary of the spunky heroines, brave rape victims [and] soul-searching fashionistas that stock so many books.”

While I still quite like my spunky heroines, I understand exactly what Flynn means: Women aren’t perfect. (Before you get all cocky, boys, neither are you.) So why try to depict us otherwise? What’s so wrong with just being human… capable of good, evil and mediocrity?

Now admittedly, with her superior faerie strength, Sabrina does have a physical edge on us non-winged women. And she also successfully handles a lot of psychological stuff in “To Err Is Faerie.”

But as any instructor at Langley will tell you, everyone has their breaking point. And I’m sure if they knew about faeries’ existence, they wouldn’t amend that statement one bit.

My writer’s philosophy is that fiction should reflect reality, even in the fantasy genre. Which is why Sabrina isn’t consistently kick-derriere throughout the Faerietales series. She falls, she breaks, and she needs help putting herself back together sometimes.

Because faerie or not, she’s still quite human in the sense that she’s mortal. Unlike Hollywood-style feminism.