Monthly Archives: February 2012

the Big Understanding

We have this highly technical term in romance: the Big Misunderstanding (or the Big Mis, if we’re feelin lazy). Back in the day this referred to, say, the heroine seeing the hero kiss another woman – disaster! – only to learn later on that it was some entirely innocent peck on the cheek, and the woman was his sister or cousin. Slightly more sophisticated is the case of mistaken identity.

Romance readers got pretty sick of the Big Mis being the only thing standing in the way of True Love. For one thing, it’s almost impossible to like and respect characters who are being passive aggressive and obnoxious with each other, and for another it’s annoying bordering on painful.

So romance readers came up with a new standard: If your characters could fix all their problems by having a conversation, then for god’s sake let them have a conversation and move on, and then give your book some actual conflict.

So far, so good. This results in books where the characters have to overcome themselves and circumstance – not something they saw and misunderstood. It means stories feel more like real life; reading them, I can think, “Yes, this is what true love takes for me as well”. It also means that you cheer every time a hero gives his heroine the benefit of the doubt, and honest conversations are a joy to read.

However.

Courtney Milan turns the Big Mis completely around in Unveiled - and I’m not entirely convinced it works. There will be a couple of mild ***spoilers*** ahead.

A quick summary, so that my point makes sense: Ash Turner has just turned the Duke of Parford’s children into bastards, which means that he is in line to inherit. He has reasons for great revenge against Parford. Parford’s daughter is posing as her father’s nurse, so that she can spy on Ash for her brothers. Ash falls into insta-love with her, and woos her even though he thinks she’s a lowly nurse – not his enemy’s daughter who’s out to prove him unfit to be a duke.

This is fertile ground for that lesser-evil, the mistaken identity. If this book had been written even five years ago, there isn’t a doubt in my mind that the reveal of her true identity would have been the catalyst for everything falling apart – especially where it comes in Milan’s book, which gives it the greatest potential for drama. It would be the moment where Ash is wounded by her falsehood, and refuses to hear her explanation.

Instead, amazingly, Ash sees only that her brothers have done badly by her to leave her in this situation – and that he himself should perhaps have treated her better.

My initial reaction was overwhelming relief. It’s kind of hard to explain, but having a secret identity within a narrative and then the disastrous reveal of the true identity is like the simplest kind of equation. It is entirely expected – so much so that you almost feel you’ve read the scene before it happens. It becomes somehow boring, laboured, a necessary evil. So to have that completely inverted – to be of all things surprised in that moment – delighted me. His reaction is also deeply pro-female. It assumes valid motivations and actions on her part, even though they are not what he might have wished.

However.

When I finished the book I felt a little underwhelmed – even though I’d enjoyed reading it.  I couldn’t help but feel that as refreshing as it was to have a Big Understanding instead of the usual, some emotional angst was missing. That’s not even to say that I only like angsty romance novels – not at all. But before the happily ever after there must be some impossibility to be borne.

And actually I think the problem was this: Margaret’s real identity wasn’t the true source of conflict between them, because Ash never cared who she really was. But Milan wrote the book as though it was.

There were so many fantastic character conflicts that could have come to the fore. I loved Margaret’s internal struggle with her loyalty and her selfhood. I loved how Ash’s need for revenge battled his need for a future. To me it would have made more interesting conflict to have them know the identity of the other – and have to work out their significant differences face to face.

Instead, Margaret places the secret of her identity between she and Ash, even though there’s no pay-off from her doing so. This was a wonderful book – but in some ways I would have preferred the angst of the Big Misunderstanding, if there was going to be a mistaken identity at all.

in which I recommend romance novels to the romance novice

You may have noticed that I think romance is worth reading. But I know from experience that it’s daunting to wade into the sea of water-coloured semi-naked chests. The genre is the most prolific in the world – so where do you even begin?

First: some terminology. According to the Romance Writers of America, a romance novel has “a central love story and an emotionally-satisfying and optimistic ending”. Check.

It will also help you to understand the difference between Category and Single-title romance. Category is the Mills and Boon style book you probably snuck out of your mum’s sock drawer as a kid. They’re around 180 pages long, and they focus tightly on the central romance. Single title is much longer (around 380 pages), and while the romance is still the central element there’s more room to explore subplots and secondary characters, and the hero and heroine can take a longer journey towards each other.

So now when I say this it’ll make sense: I only read single title, so that’s what I’ll be recommending here.

One final note: Most of the historicals I read are set in the Regency, roughly 1780s-1840s  England (that’s not the strict historical period, but the loose literary period of the same name). Think Jane Austen, who is the Mac Mama of Regency romance.

HISTORICAL

My favourite historical romance series is Lisa Kleypas‘s Hathaways. It’s Victorian rather than Regency, but I absolutely adore them – particularly the last three. Her website’s pretty crap, so here’s the proper order: Mine Till Midnight, Seduce Me at Sunrise, Tempt Me at Twilight, Married by Morning, Love in the Afternoon. You don’t necessarily have to start at the beginning, but the whole family’s gorgeous, so I would recommend enjoying them with the cumulative effect. She’s also written a lot of Regency romance, but I don’t like it as much as these. Her other Victorian series, The Wallflowers, is also a good read.

Eloisa James is a fantastic writer – probably the most consistently good of all the Regency authors I read. When she’s not wearing her romance hat, she’s a professor of Shakespeare. Her novels have a lovely wit and intelligence, and her historical settings are well-drawn. I particularly love her Essex Sisters quartet and the Desperate Duchesses series (this is set in Georgian times).

Julia Quinn is the queen of the lighthearted romp. My love affair with romance began with Ms Quinn. She can be a bit hit and miss, but the early Bridgertons are all really good and I loved her recent book What Happens in London. It’s part of a three-book series, but I didn’t think much of the other two, and it can definitely be read alone.

Loretta Chase wrote one of my all-time favourite romance novels, Lord of Scoundrels. This book consistently wins romance reader polls – by a huge margin. None of her others that I’ve tried have appealed to me in quite the same way, though her heroes are always delicious. She goes with the theory that if you can make them tall and gorgeous, why wouldn’t you?

Gaelen Foley writes much darker regency books, which I really love. Her themes and plots and characters are more complex and angsty than the more Austen-esque authors. I’ve only read her Knight Miscellany series, but except for the second book I loved them all.

Elizabeth Hoyt was a real favourite of mine for ages. Her Princes trilogy is silly and sexy and surprisingly touching. Her writing is also immensely readable. I was disappointed with her Four Soldiers quartet, and though her new series has generated a lot of positive buzz I wasn’t sold on it either. Disappointment! Still, she’s worth a go.

Julie Anne Long is very wordy, probably too wordy, but in such a gorgeous, startling, melodramatic way, that I forgive her anything. She’s really pushing what the language of romance can do, and her characters are very real, very flawed, very lovable. Her Pennyroyal Green series is well worth reading. I’ve found the books overall a bit hit and miss, but everyone disagrees about which are the hits and which are the misses, so it’s worth trying them all to find out where you stand. But whatever you do make sure and read What I Did For a Duke – probably my favourite romance. The books can be read out of order without too much trouble.

I mention Meredith Duran a lot on this blog, because I think of all the newer writers, she’s pushing the boundaries of what romance can be. Her stories and characters are complex, and often quite dark. Her books are set in the 1890s. She writes a blog with Sherry Thomas, who writes in the same period. Thomas’s stories have something about them that I’ve rarely found elsewhere, and it’s a bit hard to describe. Her writing’s easy and lyrical, her characters are flawed and human, but in a gorgeous, warm, sympathetic sort of a way. I love her.

I haven’t read it yet, but there’s a lot of buzz around Cecilia Grant‘s A Lady Awakened, and though I’ve yet to fully make up my mind about her, Courtney Milan is very well regarded.

CONTEMPORARY

I don’t read much contemporary, but there are two women I absolutely adore. One is Susan Elizabeth Phillips. Her football series (Chicago Stars) is brilliant. You don’t need to worry about reading them in any particular order (you’ll learn to pick a previous book’s hero from miles away, when he makes a cameo!). These books are really of the old-school – they have alpha heroes, wilful heroines, reality-bending premises and a dark, angsty moment where all seems lost.

The other is Jenny Crusie. She can be very hit and miss, but when she hits, it’s out of the ballpark. My favourite by her is Agnes and the Hitman, which she wrote in collaboration with Bob Mayer. I also loved Bet Me, Welcome to Temptation and Faking It. She does random bunches of people becoming family better than any other author I’ve read. Her blog is fantastic, too, and she has loads of excellent essays for writers on her website.

PARANORMAL (these tend towards erotica on the hotness scale!)

Kresley Cole‘s Immortals After Dark series was what got me reading paranormal – and as I discovered, paranormal is highly addictive. The first five or so books of the series were incredibly enjoyable: Her heroines are smart-mouthed and kick-ass, and her heroes are alpha in the best possible way. Something weird starts happening in the later books, where the abuse the hero and heroine have to take from each other before they can be together tips over into not-quite-right. Still, the first books are well worth a try, if you like paranormal.

JR Ward‘s Black Dagger Brotherhood have been massively successful, and I loved reading them. Her “colloquial” language is kind of hilarious and many people think the series are too over the top, but I just got into the overabundance of everything, and went with it. They’re quite dark, and the bad guys are a bit boring. She’s gotten to the point where she’s cycled through all her core characters, so the series feels like it’s falling apart a bit – though she’s just introduced a new band of characters who could shake things up.

ROMANCE BLOGS

There are many, many romance blogs out there. The two I regularly follow are Dear Author (each review is an open letter to the author) and Gossamer Obsessions – which posts far less regularly, but is hilarious and intelligent. One of the major romance blogs is Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, but they tend to review a lot of category, so I don’t read them that often.

Sarah from Smart Bitches and Jane from Dear Author have a podcast that I really enjoy listening to while I cook. It’s possibly more interesting to listen to if you’re well-versed in the genre, but they have a lot of recommendations and the like.

A final warning: ROMANCE NOVELS HAVE A LOT OF GRAPHIC SEX IN THEM. It probably wouldn’t have occurred to me to add this as a warning, except that almost everyone I’ve lent romance to has been taken aback by the sex. So, yeah, there’s sex. It’s all sex-positive, and more than that it’s female-positive. In fact, it’s one of the things I love about the genre – how it says to women: Your sexuality is great. You should enjoy it.

the problem with love at first sight

This American Life ran a Valentine’s day episode called ‘What I did for love‘. I love that show whatever the theme, but this episode was particularly wonderful. I encourage you all to listen to it, if you haven’t already, so that you can shake your head and marvel at what human beings do when they are emotionally rabid.

The love story that sticks out in my mind, though, is from the episode ‘Conventions‘ that ran the week before. In Act Three: When worlds collide, a man recounts how he saw a woman across the room at a convention, and something inexplicable happened to him. He laughs a little awkwardly at the idea of love at first sight, but it’s the only way he can understand what happened, when he and this woman caught sight of each other.

Listening to him, I have absolutely no trouble believing him. That once in a while love at first sight really does happen. (The first boy I ever fell in love with told me that he experienced a small explosion/implosion the first time he saw me. I was seventeen, and I had no reason in the world to doubt him.)

Part of what makes it so believable is that it wasn’t an entirely comfortable experience. He felt like he was on drugs – felt that particular loss of control and overwhelm. He couldn’t even name it, to begin with.

I finished reading Courtney Milan’s Unveiled the other day, which given my reading ennui is testament enough to my enjoyment of it. But there was something about the love-at-first-sight trope that bothered me.

Her hero Ash, as I’ve mentioned, is so charming he’s practically superhuman. Because he can’t read (oh god, I love a dyslexic hero: Hello, inner pain!) he has always relied on his animal instincts to guide him – and they have never let him down. So when he sees Margaret and knows, he doesn’t question the feeling. He just gets on with winning her over.

I didn’t mind him knowing. It was an integral part of his character, after all. But considering it was the first time he’d know this particular thing – i.e. true love – surely he would feel a little of that overwhelm that the man on the radio described? That man was sure as well. In fact, he had more than a little alpha romance hero about him. But that didn’t stop the feeling from bowling him over a little. Even scaring him a little.

The effect of the unquestioned love at first sight in Unveiled was that I never quite got a handle on the heroine. By the end of the book I liked her a lot – she was strong and had a particular, individual flavour about her. She was flawed but strived to be good. But all of that seemed somehow erased – made inconsequential by Ash’s certainty. He was certain before he knew her, and he remained certain throughout the book, no matter what he learned about her (more on that later when I talk about the opposite of a Big Misunderstanding).

The characters address this in the book – sort of. And there are a couple of nice moments when they’ve come to know each other, come close, and Ash knows that this intimacy is what he felt when he first saw her, in premonition. But I think for it to really work for me, the narrative would have to address it.

By which I mean: I want his surety to become a player in the narrative. I want it to be used against him so that he has to question himself. I want it to force the characters into awkward, or unnatural situations they wouldn’t otherwise be in that are neither comfortable nor nice. I want his love to create something that’s a bit the opposite of love.

But maybe I’m just a little narrative-psychotic.

kill the brain

Last week special k took his headphones to work, and it was cataclysmic. When I write, I listen to music on his pro headphones, which effectively shuts me into my own private world. Heading off to a day of writing without them…I felt a little like an addict whose secret stash had disappeared without warning. Shaky, uncertain, wondering how the hell I was going to manage.

Sure enough, at about 1:30 in the afternoon my brain refused to cooperate, and I felt like a hyperactive kid, being forced to sit quietly in a quiet library, about to do something crazy.

Jenny Crusie, Lucy March and Anne Stuart posted a great chat about using soundtracks for developing and writing their books. They talk about using music to create character and mood – and the way the soundtrack becomes synonymous with those things. They talk about music selection and sex songs.

One thing they didn’t mention, and this is probably my primary use of music when I write: It kills off part of my brain. Or if I’m being less dramatic and more accurate, let’s say it distracts part of my brain.

That part that felt like an ADHD kid the other day? It needs noise, and bright shiny things to keep it occupied, so that it doesn’t put its sticky hands all over my story, or come too close to my thoughts and breathe curiously all over them.

It also distracts the critical, analytical part of my brain, so that it’s much easier to just write. I suspect this is the same function music plays in evoking mood. It allows me to slip into a certain part of my feeling-brain and write from there.

The soundtrack for my work in progress (and some of these vids are awful, so just close your eyes and listen!) is:

(this one gave me my hero’s name!)

the thinking, creating, writing profession

There are a bunch of “being a writer means” memes going round facebook right now. You know “this is what your mum thinks you do” [idiot staring at typewriter], “this is what your publishers think you do” [monkey sitting at typewriter], “this is what you really do” [playing solitaire/creating worlds].

It’s difficult to define what being a writer means – especially because it’s writers trying to define it, so you mostly get pithy little catchphrases that tell you nothing at all.

There are equal parts awe and disdain attached to the image of the writer. On the one hand writers are people who linger in thinking, who attempt to master language – the means by which we understand and experience the world – so that they can electrify another mind. On the other, they are people who exist more in their own minds than in the world, and strive hopelessly to perfect language – which just is, and can never be perfected – and to capture the human experience – which can never be captured, only experienced.

Or, you know, not.

Like I said – writers writing pithy (long-winded) statements that may or may not be true.

Here’s one concrete thing, though: The only difference between what I do now and what I did when I was eight years old writing hungrily in an A3 scrapbook is that now, writing is my profession.

That doesn’t come from being published – I’m not. It comes from the way I approach my writing, and the way I never write as a hobby, or to fill spare time, or when I’m anxious that I’m not getting enough done (which is when it’s hardest not to write, and simultaneously worst to write).

At the moment, being professional looks like this: Three days a week me and Cat go to the Victoria State Library and work from 10 till 5. We have two breaks. One day a week I travel to another friend’s house, and we have a slightly more relaxed, but always-productive writing day. Once a fortnight we have a writers-group-with-wine, and once a month I go to the Melbourne Romance Writers Guild meeting. Where there’s chocolate.

The first day Cat and I wrote at the Library, we looked at each other afterwards, both embarrassed. “Er, why haven’t we been doing this ALL THE TIME?” was more or less our reaction.

There is an incredible productivity in being somewhere so dense with silence, with concentration – but with such high, light ceilings. Soft air conditioning. A desk, and a good chair. Sometimes I need to close myself into my own world with music, and sometimes the library sounds help me sink into a scene. But for those hours, it’s just me and my story, and there’s nowhere else I’m meant to be, and there’s nothing else I’m meant to be doing.

Like I said – productive.

My sister (who develops and manages projects for a living) helped me get a handle on my new way of working, and the thing she said to me that made the biggest difference was this: “You need to work away from home. Other people finish work at 5, and after that they do their house cleaning and their cooking. That’s how many hours a day you need to be working to get things done.”

the unaffected heroine

I’ve just started reading Unveiled by Courtney Milan, which is exciting because there’s a lot of buzz about her writing and so far I’m right there in the story. This is a huge thing for me, in these days of reading ennui.

One tendency that’s making me slightly uneasy: her heroine refuses to be affected by the hero’s almost supernatural charm.

This is pretty standard romance fare, really. A tough heroine who refuses to be diverted from her mission by a hero she has every reason to hate. But for me, it lacks complexity. One of the things that make writers like Meredith Duran and Sherry Thomas stand out, is the many-faceted – and unexpected – and human reactions of their characters.

I appreciate a heroine who is strong enough to know “I do not have time for this attraction”, but I think humans are easier than they like when it comes to charm and flattery. I think charm is very, very difficult to resist. And I like a heroine who is affected by the people around her, and who craves warmth, and who allows herself to feel complicated things, even when it makes everything else more difficult.

direct speech

The other day I wanted to recycle a piece of writing from an earlier draft. In that version my hero was lying in bed thinking something like this:

Once, as a boy, Roscoe had been taken to Vauxhall Gardens by his uncle Lord Gardston, the real Rose’s father. They had sat and watched a puppet show. He remembered how Rose had clasped her brother Nate’s hand when the villain of the piece—a forest sprite, done up in a hard casing of seeds and twigs—appeared to the fanfare of lights and whistles. Roscoe, only five years old but heir to a duchy nonetheless, had clasped his own hand beneath his cloak.

Then the miraculous, the impossible, had happened. The sprite, as do all seeds eventually, cracked open to reveal its most vulnerable, tender centre: a swathe of red silk that seemed so frail against its crusty exterior, but so bright, so beautiful that surely nothing would ever destroy it.

Last night had eclipsed that childhood wonder. Beatrice—wild, hard, impossible to breach—had seen him in all his sick, wasted glory and she watched him steadily yet, her amber eyes lit. She was at bay, but she was intrigued.

She had come close.

He had felt only the faintest lick of the warmth within her, hoarded so severely away from the public eye.

I liked the image (which comes, half-remembered, from a puppet show of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie I saw as a child), and I liked the idea of potential – that my hero has only seen the tiniest bit of my heroine’s true self. I transposed it onto a scene where they’re lying in bed together after getting drunk. And I can’t remember why exactly, but I thought it might be a good idea to have him say those things directly to her. Which made a scene like this:

Roscoe curled in towards her, and sighed with contentment.

His eyes were closed, and she thought after a couple of minutes that he’d fallen asleep, but he began to talk, low and rumpled, without opening his eyes.

“When I was a boy—maybe five years old—my uncle took me to Vauxhall Gardens. Lord Gardston, Rose’s father. We watched a puppet show. How strange that he would think to take us to see a puppet show. The villain was a forest sprite, done up in a hard casing of seeds and twigs.” His face scrunched up, and he nestled further into the covers. “I think there must have been some sort of fanfare—lights and whistles, that sort of thing—when he appeared, because when I try and remember it now I still feel,” a sleepy roll of his shoulder, “awe. Fear. Rose and Nate grabbed each other, but I couldn’t because I would be a duke some day.”

Bea didn’t dare move for fear that he would stop.

“Then,” he said, and paused. An expression lit his face that was like hurt, but good in a way she couldn’t articulate. “The miraculous, the impossible, happened,” he said. “The sprite cracked open—as seeds do, but we’d forgotten that seeds do or were too young to know it—and revealed its most vulnerable, tender centre: a swathe of red silk that seemed so frail against its crusty exterior, but so bright, so beautiful that I knew nothing would ever destroy it.”

His eyes opened, and they were not sleepy, and she had no time for defence. “Last night eclipsed that childhood wonder,” he said. “You are wild, and hard, and impossible to breach—and I have felt only the faintest lick of the warmth in you.”

He didn’t make a single move towards her, but she was breathing like she’d been running, like she’d been drowning, and her heartbeat rushed past her ears like thousands of needles dropped on marble.

“I want to crack you open,” he said. 

I did not expect how intense it is for him to say that stuff to her. Dialogue is mostly made up of people not quite saying what they mean, or not responding directly to conversational prompts, so to have someone be so direct packs a punch. There are also certain intense thoughts we have that we learn over time not to say aloud – it’s too much. It is perfect, for my hero, that he would say them anyway.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this technique since I (re)wrote this scene, and have been playing around with it. I think there’s something to it. If you want intense, intimate (probably too-intimate, keep that in mind) dialogue, take a character’s innermost and honest thoughts, and have them say those thoughts directly to the person they’re about.

See what happens.

the kick-ass heroine (in the tv show)

Any die-hard Bones fan is going to understand why the parenthetical addition was necessary. All the rest of you need to know is: I have finally found something to stop me watching How I Met Your Mother on repeat.

I have fallen in love again, and this time it’s Bones.

It’s probably a different kind of love, because I’m not super into gore or mystery, so you could probably move the team into any field of expertise (but they would have to be at the forefront of whatever field that was, that’s just the way they are) and I would love it just as much.

There are so many great things about this show, but today I’m just going to focus on what an incredible character Dr Temperance Brennan is.

After the 80s the work of generations of feminists started to show in romance: women started having their own careers and interests and a commitment didn’t always mean marriage. But I think writers still have some difficulty resisting at least the emotional catharsis of having a woman be cared for by a man.

Now don’t get me wrong, there is room for caring in a relationship; sometimes my husband is the only thing that can make a black day better. But there’s a small scene in Bones that perfectly illustrates why Brennan is so kick-ass.

She and her FBI partner are inspecting a body on some scaffolding at night. He says to her, “Are you cold? Do you want my coat?” and she looks up, confused, slightly annoyed at being distracted and says, “No. I would ask for it if I did.”

Over and over again she resists the emotional catharsis of I hand my burdens over to you. I didn’t even realise this was a kind of emotional catharsis until I started to feel the strain of an expectation not being met. And then I looked at why. And I liked it.