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Monday, April 13th, 2009
 
April is National Poetry Month. This year’s poster is kind of subtle, mostly shades of gray, but interesting. It features a foggy wet surface with finger marks dragged through quoting T. S. Eliot: “Do I dare disturb the universe?” It is formidable to think that one’s words have the power to alter the universe, but it’s true. Just ask Shakespeare, Thomas Paine, Voltaire or Jane Austen. While I don’t think anything I write is in the ‘disturbing’ and ‘important’ category, I hope to provide a few hours pleasure and release from everyday life.
(And that is a disturbing and important thought. For the book you spend months on—perhaps years—will be read in just a few hours. If writers got paid for the amount of time actually writing, we’d probably be getting invisible fractions of a penny per hour, LOL.)
As you know, I’m back in the risky business of taking a seriously fractured hero and taping him up together in Master of Sin. I need help with Italian (iGoogle!) and psychology. I’ve got to create a fictional Scottish island too, because my husband says we can’t afford the “research” trip to the Outer Hebrides. Heck, I’d settle for the Inner Hebrides.  But before I get too far into the book, I need to have my feet firmly planted in Andrew Rossiter’s universe, where poetry is a luxury and “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”
Classical poetry may have fallen out of fashion, but many song lyrics speak to the poetic souls in all of us. Here is humble romance from Jamey Johnson’s In Color:
This one is my favorite one—
This is me and grandma in the summer sun
All dressed up the day we said our vows.
You can’t tell it here but it was hot that June,
That rose was red and her eyes were blue.
And just look at that smile,I was so proud
That’s the story of my life—
Right there in black and white.
And if it looks like we were scared to death
Like a couple of kids just trying to save each other
You should have seen it in color.
A picture’s worth a thousand words,
But you can’t see what those shades of gray keep covered.
You should have seen it in color.
Go color your universe! Any lyrics/poems you’d like to post?
You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you. ~Joseph Joubert
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Wednesday, April 8th, 2009
 
I woke up the other morning at 3 A.M. and there she was, like an even ashier Cinderella. She was tiny, scrawny, brown and dirty. Her hair was a mess, her tongue as sharp as an adder. She was my unlikely heroine for my unlikely hero Andrew, and she was still nameless. I kept thinking of the fabulous Shakespeare Re-Told Taming of the Shrew. Shirley Henderson played Kate, and while a bit over the top, kind of fit my mental profile. So here’s when Andrew first meets Miss Peartree:
He tiptoed down the hallway as quietly as he ever had eluding a suspicious wife or husband, coming at last to the kitchen. A raggedy serving girl dressed in what appeared to be stray Tartans and tablecloths was bent over an empty fireplace, a pitiful pile of sticks on the hearth. At the sound of his footstep on the bare slate floor she turned and shrieked.
Some of Andrew’s childhood Gaelic had come back to him the further north he’d come. Immersion with the village women earlier had helped a bit too. “Gabh mo leithsceal.” Excuse me.
“Does bloody anyone in this bloody place speak any bloody English?” the girl muttered.
She looked like a street urchin. Her brown hair was a nest, her pointed, unfashionably brown face was smudged and her brown skirts muddied. She was so very brown. Surely she couldn’t be—
“Miss Peartree?” Andrew asked, praying not.
The little wren’s mouth hung open like a baby bird waiting to be fed. Then she looked like she tasted the worm. “Oh, good lord. Mr. Rossiter?” She curtseyed, nearly tripping on twigs.
A little later on in the day, she became Gemma, because she is a jewel just waiting to be polished.
Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night to write?
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Saturday, April 4th, 2009
 
Some people think baths are yucky. These are the “You’re soaking in your own filth” crowd. But I’m definitely in the liquid relaxation line, beginning almost every morning with a steaming hot bath. I don’t have to worry about falling down while shaving my legs, and I’ve got one of those removable showerheads so I can wash and rinse my hair. I’ve lived in houses with tubs only and houses with showers only. If I had to make a choice, I’d take the house with the tub every time.
Now I know you’re asking yourself, “Why the hell is Maggie talking about her personal hygiene routine?” It’s simple. I finished Mistress by Marriage on Thursday. And what did I want to do to celebrate? Drink champagne? Eat a pound of chocolate? Nope, I wanted to take another bath, even though it had been only three hours since I took the last one. So I talked myself out of it, because I hadn’t done anything to get myself dirty except touch a keyboard and my skin is still kind of dry from the longest winter ever. But now you know my mad method of having fun. I am one wild woman.
What do you do when you finish a big project? Do you prefer to shower or bathe?
There must be quite a few things that a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them. ~Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (uh, perhaps not the best bath advocate out there)
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Wednesday, April 1st, 2009
 
In the last couple of weeks, I’ve put down almost as many books as I’ve picked up. Yes, I’m picky. Perhaps part of the reason I’m so nonchalant about abandoning them is that I don’t have a vested cash interest. Ely paid for them. She and I swap books. I love getting boxes from her that have little stickies on each book with pointed comments: “Not so horrible, just so-so for me,” “The best part about this book? The dog on the cover,” “Spooge! It’s so bad have liquor nearby,” “Oy vey, the Scots are coming.”
Now, the fact that I can shut a book midway, or skim ahead to the HEA is something new. I used to be a good girl who read every word until the bitter end. Now I operate on the “Life is short so eat dessert first” principle. If something tastes bad or boring to me, that is The End, even if I’m on page 127.
Do you abandon, skim or read the last chapter first? Do you do a book swap or donate your books? (I do both.)
It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer. ~Albert Einstein (who probably never read a bad romance novel, and who was definitely not an April fool.)
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Wednesday, March 25th, 2009
 
Sometimes a child can make you see things a whole different way, simply because she doesn’t want to see things a whole different way. Sadie and I were playing with Play-Doh the other day, and she had a fit if I changed the shape of the stuff. Rolled it like a hotdog? Shriek. Flattened it like a pancake? Shriek. Cut it in half? Double shriek. She wanted the purple blob just the same way it came out of the can and was crabby when she couldn’t get her way.
Most of us are like Sadie—we want the comfort of our known world. We buy our favorite authors, we watch our favorite shows, we hang out with our favorite friends, we visit our favorite blogs (and thank you if you’re reading this). We know what we like, and that’s not a bad thing. But I never want to get too comfortable. My next book will be a challenge I hope to pull off. My hero will be kind of unheroic—a morally challenged, damaged man who will be transformed by the love of a good woman (the still first nameless Miss Peartree). What have you done lately to stretch your Play-Doh?
The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won’t. ~Henry Ward Beecher
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Wednesday, March 18th, 2009
 
Not Corps. Don’t want you to think I don’t know how to spell. My current heroine is a writer of gothic novels, and her writing plays a central role in Mistress by Marriage. This is not the first time I’ve wound up with a writer-heroine. They do say to write what you know, and when you’re stuck in front of the computer, you forget there are other possibilities out there.
One of my very earliest novella characters was a romance writer who didn’t believe in love. She got the guy anyway, and had twins to boot. *Snort*. Then there was infamous Kelly King, who wrote several romances simultaneously, much to the dismay of her mixed-up couples.
It’s hard to find the proper ‘career’ for a historical heroine. Writing historicals is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, you can get away with all sorts of Uber-Alpha-Maleness and unprotected sex that would be extremely irritating in real life. On the other hand, women were expected to play a very different role in society, and to be true to the era, you really can’t have a heroine running around claiming she wants to stay unmarried and be ‘independent.’ Are you telling me that instead of having a nice warm hero in her bed, she’d rather be at the mercy of her father, her brother or some cross-eyed cousin? I don’t think so. Getting the balance right between 21st century sensibilities and 19th century reality is tricky.
What are ‘acceptable’ activities for your historical heroines? If you write contemporaries, how big a role does employment play in your plot?
March is Women’s History Month. Go out and make some!
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Thursday, March 12th, 2009
The other day was “Find Out What Your Name Means Day.” We celebrate these odd ‘holidays’ in the library. I post a little sign at the circulation desk and add a book if I’ve got one. So that day I brought in 20,001 Names for Baby, which I bought long after I had my four kids. I use it for my heroes and heroines, although mostly they pop up in my head with their nametag already on. My name from the Greek means ‘pearl.’ It is ‘one of the standard female names in the Western world.’ It’s no longer quite so popular, but in my family (on both sides), pretty much everybody was named Margaret, including my mom.
A couple of posts ago, I invited you, my divinely faithful readers, to help me with my next book. Never mind that I still have about 22,000 words to go on the current one. Ding ding ding. We have a winner. Ely suggested Master of Sin for the title, which I love with ever fiber of my pure, pearl-like being. Andrew seems to be sticking as Andrew. In Greek, it means ‘masculine.’ which is interesting as his backstory is complicated. Miss Peartree has yet to find a first name. I suppose she can stay Miss Peartree for an indefinite number of pages until Andrew gets her out of her laces and into bed. At some point she will give him permission to use her Christian name, whatever it is.
My current hero Edward is Old English for ‘wealthy defender,’ which suits him nicely. His heroine Caroline is the feminized version of Old Germanic Carl/Charles, which means ‘man.’ Hmm.
Do you know what your name means? If you don’t, I can look it up for you. Do you pick your characters’ names with a nod towards symbolism? What have you named them?
Words have meaning and names have power. ~Author Unknown
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Friday, March 6th, 2009
 
This has nothing to do with romance, but something to do with love. I’m so proud of my youngest daughter. She works for the non-profit organization Citizen Schools as a team leader in their after school program in the Boston area. Like many non-profits, Citizen Schools is feeling the pinch of the economic downturn. Campuses have closed, there have been staff layoffs, and kids are at risk. Employees have been asked to raise money, and I’m providing the link to Abby’s donation page. Don’t worry. You can read her page without money being sucked immediately through the Internet, and find out more about Citizen Schools, too. Any amount, no matter how modest, will be appreciated. Citizen Schools was featured in Time Magazine’s 21 Ways to Serve America. Read Abby’s story and spread the word!
P.S. I told Abby I was going to put up this post, and she thanked me profusely. Then she squealed. “You mean, it’s right above your last post? The one about, um, about…” It’s tough to have a romance writer for a mom, LOL.
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Wednesday, March 4th, 2009
 
I’m a big fan of Thesaurus.com. I often have it minimized when I write. Do you know if you type in clitoris, this is what you get?
No results found for clitoris:
Did you mean clamorous?
Thesaurus suggestions:
glorious
culture
glitz
literacy
cauterize
cultural
cultured
I kind of like clamorous. I picture the little erectile organ all party-like, making some kind of insistent squeaky noise. Glorious is great, too. Center of my womanhood and all that. I’m not sure my clitoris is glitzy (shades of the Glittery Hoo-Ha. Do you know my husband called it a hoo-hoo when he was little? I guess he didn’t get the memo. My family called it a quincy, which confused the hell out of me when I had to memorize the presidents and came upon John Quincy Adams.) It may be cultured and I’m very grateful it’s not cauterized.
Why, you ask, am I even looking clitoris up? It all has to do with literacy.I have been steeped in sex. (Ely says this would be a great name for a soup or perfume.) I have spent a considerable time in recent days lengthening (ha) my sex scenes in the first two Mistress books. Once again my grandmother had scrubbed my mind from any dirt, and the writing results were disappointing. I made my two line and two paragraph scenes turn into two pages. At least. Voila!
I’m never going to be a Tab A/Slot B girl. I skim reading other writers’ sex scenes, although I’m sure they suffered and slaved away writing them. I’m more interested in the emotional dynamics of the couple. My agent Laura Bradford sent me a hilarious book for Christmas: The Big Book of Filth. In it is just about every historical slang word for body parts and sexual acts. Somehow I don’t think cockshire is going to replace vagina any time soon. I’d rather go with name-it-not and call it good.
Here’s the BBOF’s 19th century slang for clitoris. There’s no jewel or pearl or bud or rose to be found. Please tell me your preference, or suggest your own!
little shame tongue
little ploughman
man in the boat
little old man in the boat (yeah, that makes me feel much better)
button
Sex: the thing that takes up the least amount of time and causes the most amount of trouble. ~John Barrymore
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Saturday, February 28th, 2009
 
I’m still on a vacation high, even if it snowed two feet the other day. Yes. Two feet. But I came home filled with a refreshed zest to write and have knocked out thousands of new words on four different projects (amongst them, more spice to the two Courtesan Court books, which my agent likes. Hurray!). My new hero is haunting me, too. If Paradise had a really tortured heroine, this next book is going to have a really tortured hero.
He’s Scottish. Bad. Bent. Looks like an angel with golden curls and blue eyes. Right now his name is Andrew Rossiter. The Rossiter stays, but I’m not sure about the Andrew. He’s done things he should be ashamed of. Isn’t. But his reformation is right around the corner, aided by an Italian-speaking governess (who isn’t necessarily Italian) named Miss Something Peartree. And that’s all I know so far. I’m kicking titles and names around, and I need help. I’m thinking of Master of Something (to go with the Mistress books). Here’s your chance to name my book and my characters. If I ever get published, you’ll be in the dedication.
Andrew is not quite a drag queen, but he’s crossed a line or two. That’s Daughter #2, who encountered these gentlemen on the street in Key West and had the presence of mind to take the picture. Ah. Memories.
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