Things that go bump in the night

In the spirit (no pun intended) of the spooky dark nights drawing in here in the UK, I decided to do a post about William of Newburgh’s medieval stories about English vampires. Now these aren’t your usual bloodsucking beasties with fangs, capes, and a dodgy Transylvanian accent – in fact, they’re revenants, close kin to the Balkan and Greek vrykolakas, created from sin and used in a didactic manner by the historian who recorded these tales.

William of Newburgh (1136-1198) was an Augustinian canon at Newburgh Priory in Yorkshire. His work Historia rerum Anglicarum (otherwise known as the Chronicles) was written in the latter years of William’s life and is a philosophical history of England from 1066 until 1198. Modelling himself on the Venerable Bede and pouring scorn on chroniclers like Geoffrey of Monmouth (“he lies in almost everything,” William rants in his preface), William nevertheless includes several accounts of men rising from the grave and wreaking havoc amongst the living.

In Buckingham (Chronicles V.22), a man died and was buried but later returned from the grave and got into bed with his wife. This continued for three nights, until the wife stayed up late with her friends in order to drive away the revenant, who then went wandering around harassing anyone it could find. Interestingly, William states that the revenant walked about in daylight, yet only appeared visible to one or two people even if a group was aware of its presence – thus making the revenant seem to fit with modern ideas of a ghost.

The desperate villagers appealed to the church to put an end to the random perambulations of the revenant, and the matter came to the attention of the Bishop of Lincoln. His Grace asked his learned colleagues for advice, and was told that the corpse should be exhumed and burned. The bishop found this idea “indecent and improper”, and instead wrote a letter of absolution. The villagers opened the dead man’s coffin and placed the letter upon the corpse, and the revenant wandered no more.

This, the first of William’s revenant tales, is perhaps the most striking because the dead man has no reason to rise from the grave. As we shall see, revenants usually return to deal with unfinished business, or because they were thoroughly unpleasant types during their lifetime. The Buckinghamshire revenant seems to be more like a confused spirit, unaware that he’s died and trying to continue with his daily life. The letter of absolution also underlines the fact that the dead man was harmless – as the Bishop of Lincoln was told, evil revenants were exhumed, hacked to pieces, and burned.

William follows this tale with another three examples of similar events. A rich man in Berwick (V.23), described as “a great rogue”, returned from the grave and strode about accompanied by a pack of barking dogs. The townsfolk hired ten young men to dig up the corpse, chop it to bits, and throw it on the fire.

In Melrose (V.24.2), a chaplain who was rather too secular in his living came back as a revenant, haunting the monastery walls and terrifying the noblewoman to whom he’d been a confessor. The lady appealed for help, and a group of men sat in the graveyard and waited for the shambling monster. Midnight came and went, and three of the men decided it was too cold to hang around any longer. As soon as the last man was left alone, the revenant awoke. But the man attacked it with an axe, driving the creature away. Later, the chaplain’s corpse was exhumed and a gaping wound was discovered in the body. With the chaplain’s evil proved beyond all doubt, the corpse was burned and the ashes scattered.

Finally, a man of “evil conduct” from York (V.24.4) fled the city to a place called Anantis (either Annan in Dumfries & Galloway, or possibly Alnwick), where he continued his nefarious doings. He married a local woman and soon became convinced she was having an affair. Pretending to go away for a few days, he hid amongst the roof-beams of his bedroom and spied on his wife, and sure enough caught her in bed with a neighbour. The shock was so great he fell from the roof and became ill. His wife told him he was mistaken in what he’d seen, and when a priest urged the man to confess and receive the Eucharist, the wife convinced her husband not to do so. The man died that very night and became a revenant, bringing with it a pestilence. The locals dug up the corpse and tore it to pieces, ripping out its heart before setting fire to the remains.

In these three tales, the revenant is a sinner during life, and his sin follows him even beyond the grave. Since each of the men had escaped punishment for their wickedness while they lived, becoming a revenant was the ultimate penalty. These men were effectively denied a Christian burial, and more than that, they were denied their human form when their corpses were exhumed, divided, and burned. A revenant was cast out of the Church and therefore out of society, and without a body and a grave, these evildoers would be permanently locked out of Heaven on the Day of Judgement – and in the twelfth century, this was a terrifying thought.

What’s also interesting is the geographic bias shown in the stories. The revenant from Buckingham is non-threatening and settles into its grave after Church intervention. Surely it’s no coincidence that the three troublesome and evil revenants are all to be found within the Scottish Borders – Berwick, Melrose, and Alnwick. William was fully aware of Henry II’s skirmishes against the Scots in 1174 (II.32-34), when the English won a decisive victory at Alnwick, of all places.

The didactic theme of William of Newburgh’s revenant stories is clear enough. As William himself remarks (V.24.1), such events are “not easy to believe” due to their “amazing and horrible” nature, but he adds that if he were to record all such examples of these stories, “the undertaking would be beyond measure laborious and troublesome”, and so he contents himself with these few tales “as a warning to posterity.”

While the lack of revenants wandering down your local high street today is no doubt due to the rise in popularity of cremation, in places such as the Greek islands where it’s customary to inter the dead, the belief in revenants rising at dusk to stalk through the night still persists…

 

Note of Caution, perhaps?

I’ve just been writing a review of “Fellow Travellers” by T.C. Worsley for Speak Its Name (review will go up on 25th, not there yet, I’m scheduling them for one a day, which is working out well, I think) and I was struck by the similarity to part of the plot (based on real people and real events) to David Leavitt’s While England Sleeps.

Worsley’s book is based on novelist Stephen Spender and his friends and lovers in the 1930’s.

With a little digging, I found out why it seemed so familiar, when I discovered this on Stephen Spender’s Wikipedia page:

Spender sued author David Leavitt for allegedly using his relationship with “Jimmy Younger” in Leavitt’s While England Sleeps in 1994. The case was settled out of court with Leavitt removing certain portions from his text.

I found this rather interesting, because it’s often a concern of mine about putting real facts about people (changed, obviously) into gay historical novels.  In this case even though While England Sleeps was a work of fiction, no similarity to anyone living or dead, yadda yadda, the facts were similar enough for Spender to insist that the book was changed.

(It should be noted that Spender notoriously censored his own work, changing the line of one of his poems from:

Whatever happens, I shall never be alone. I shall always have a boy, a railway fare, or a revolution.

to:

Whatever happens, I shall never be alone. I shall always have an affair, a railway fare, or a revolution.)

Which is rather sad.

But my point is that I’ve taken instances of real-life happenings and used them in my books, I’m sure we all have.  I’ve seen other writers discuss the same, and I wonder whether this caution I’m now feeling should only extend to living people?

I personally think it was a bit cheeky of Leavitt to pinch the salient details of Spender’s affair with “Jimmy” (Tony Hyndham) as it wouldn’t have been at all difficult to mangle the facts sufficiently to avoid a court case.

I am gratified at least, that it was settled out of court–and I have no doubt that this was a deliberate move–because it would raise a dangerous precedent which could result in many people complaining that their life stories had been pilfered for fictional purposes.

What do you think? Is there any legal beagle out there who can define the law involved?

Should we all be a little careful when taking facts from life, especially within living memory?

 

Historical Character Dilemma

While restructuring Speak Its Name, I found myself on a horns of a dilemma, and would like to throw the subject open to see what people think.

I was about to pull several books for not being “actual history” e.g. dealing with people who really didn’t exist e.g. 14th century Hollywood style King Arthurs or Robin Hood books, and then I noticed, that, with the upsurge of classical book fanfiction, this put characters like Mr Darcy (Pride/Prejudice) and James Fairfax (James Fairfax) in the same boat – that these are books are “historically famous people who don’t exist.”

So, what do you think?  Where does one draw the line?  When dealing with historical characters should they be in their correct time frame?  Would you consider a book about Robin Hood to be history even though he didn’t exist? If the answer to that question is “no” then what about Mr Darcy? What about Hamlet?

Should these go into a separate category such as “Alternative History”?  I know that the Historical Novel Society encompass A.U books such as the Novik Temeraire series, so perhaps I’m worrying too much, but it’s such a new genre, I’d like to get groundlines in place.

Additionally, what about real person slash?  If a character is proven homosexual, such as Wilde, I’d say that that’s no problem, but what about if you speculate that someone is gay or bisexual where there isn’t any evidence?

Thoughts?

 

Charlie goes to the Romantic Novelists’ Association lunch, take three

I must be getting used to this. I no longer get butterflies in the tummy as I go in through the door of Joe Daflo’s, I’m used to being the second youngest person present and I know that no-one will kill me if I say I write gay romance. I do still have the feeling that they’ll out me one day and discover that I’m not really a writer, but that’s more how I feel about me than how they feel.

Today’s speaker was Jenny Haddon, author, RNA treasurer and generally good egg. She was telling us about the history of the RNA, which celebrates 50 years of existence in 2010. They’ve undergone changes of name, and perhaps of mission, but the present day organisation’s aims are (in their words):

We work to enhance and promote the various types of romantic and historical fiction, to encourage good writing in all its many varieties, to learn more about our craft and help readers enjoy it.
Romantic Fiction covers an enormous range, from short stories through category romance and much of women’s fiction, to the classics. The nature of romantic fiction means that most of these novels are written and read by women. The RNA, however, boasts a number of very successful male authors amongst their membership.

The list of past officers boasts plenty of well known names, and it was the stories about some of these larger than life characters which enthralled us. There was no surprise in hearing tales of people who had Ivor Novello round to tea or ones who didn’t think you were ‘in’ unless you had royalty in your address book. What was more intriguing were tales of the author who travelled abroad to watch operas and came home wearing fur coats and jewels which belonged to Jewish people who were about to leave pre-war Europe (the valuables being, in effect, smuggled in plain sight so that when these émigrés arrived they would have something of value to sell).

Given the present hoo-hah on various fronts (you don’t need to spell that out, do you?) I listened to some of the early history trying to fight a wry grin. Back-biting, power struggles, people unable – or unused – to working together and having consensus decisions, all the familiar elements were there. Author branding and maintaining the image the public expect, the under-appreciation of romantic fiction by the ‘highbrow’ critics – plus ca change? And when Ms Haddon described organising authors as being like herding cats I wanted to shout out ‘Bingo!’

As I keep saying to any UK writers, find your local RNA chapter and hie thee hence. You’ll love it.

 

Faces in the Crowd

My apologies first of all for this being late.  I do honestly try to post something at least once a month and I thought September had 31 days.  Really. Honest!

At any rate, better late than pregnant never, that’s my motto, and I wanted to talk about characters – specifically, the kind you don’t necessarily want.  By that, I mean the sort of people who show up while you’re writing your novel and insist that you must add them in immediately as Character Number Two’s significant love interest, or the entire book will be ruined.  You know the type: sits on your shoulder like a medieval devil and whispers naughty things into your ear, while you try desperately to ignore him so you can finish this next chapter.

Yeah. That guy.

Right now I am working on a Victorian-era mystery novel entitled Rag & Bone; it’s an Inspector Raft mystery, which means it has a particular set of recurring characters.

Inspector Philemon Raft:

Inspector Raft is a Scotland Yard man, a 20-year veteran of the Force who relies on his well-developed policing instincts to solve crimes and perhaps a little something else (hint: he sees dead people.)  Raft is moderate in his habits: he smokes the occasional cigarette or thin cigar, eats sparingly and only as needed, and doesn’t drink because for some reason known only to his creator (i.e., me) he can’t metabolise alcohol in any form.  Raft is pretty much a loner and, until he meets Constable Frederic Crook in the first novel, he lives alone.  He has been in love before, while he was at school but he doesn’t really fall totally and completely until he and Freddie connect near the end of the first novel, Willing Flesh.

Raft is also an introvert and, apart from Freddie, has no real friends.  He occasionally consults with the disgraced solicitor Jeremy Hoare – an expert in what we would nowadays call ‘trace evidence’ – and his live-in companion, Dr. John Ponsonby.  Raft finds the company of other people almost physically painful; his reactions to prolonged contact with other human beings results in a withdrawal from society that is almost autistic.

Raft’s closest friend, confidante and lover is Constable Frederic Crook, a true English aristocrat (he is the youngest son of the Earl of Bolsover) who, in stark contrast to Raft, is at ease in company and enjoys the society of his peers.  It is to Freddie that the series’ secondary characters often address their questions and concerns and he is the point of contact for those who would like to approach Raft but are afraid to.  It isn’t that Raft is chilly or unfeeling – quite to the contrary, he has an excess of feeling which he unfortunately bottles up in good, late-Victorian-era fashion until it erupts at the most inopportune moments.

Freddie is handsome, debonair, and equally at home in Society or the slums.   Physically, I modelled him after English actor Sam West (for whom I’ve long carried a torch-from-afar).  He is educated and clever, and able to soothe tender feelings that may have gotten hurt by Raft’s occasional abruptness.  Freddie is 25 to Raft’s 39, and as a younger man he often regards Raft as too serious – but his respect for Raft is evident and he is more in love with Raft than he is ready to admit.

Freddie and Raft form the nucleus of the novels but there are, of course, other characters.  The disgraced solicitor Jeremy Hoare, for example:

The suite of rooms that Jeremy Hoare shared with his companion and friend, Doctor John Ponsonby, were located in a quiet street in Westminster, a rather more salubrious location than Raft’s own lodgings in Cheapside.  Raft had always found himself amused by Hoare’s endless attempts at respectability, considering what the disgraced solicitor did to fill his spare time.  Hoare had graduated from Eton and from there went to Cambridge, where he read law and, from all accounts, excelled.  Hoare’s main trouble, as far as Raft could make out from the scanty bits of gossip passed his way, was his laziness, broken only by periods of frenetic activity, during which he sometimes stayed up for days at a time.  It was rumoured that Hoare was a known abuser of the cocaine bottle, and if so, it would account for his highly-strung and very uneven temperament.  As much as Raft admired Hoare’s brains, he disliked visiting the solicitor because he was never sure in what sort of mood he might be received.  Things might have been different if Hoare actually practised the law, but his personal proclivities had seen him ousted from the Inner Temple; since then, he had confined himself to providing informal legal advice to such persons as might apply to him, and acting as amateur detective.

Hoare takes many of his characteristics – and his Christian name – from the late Jeremy Brett; at one point Raft remembers seeing Hoare leaping over a couch.

Hoare’s function in the novel is to act as a foil for Raft and to fill in the gaps in Raft’s forensic knowledge:

“Liquid.” Hoare puffed on his cigar triumphantly.

“Beg your pardon?”  Raft moved a little closer to the fire, warming his cold hands and trying vainly to rub some heat back into his body.  It was damnably chilly for September and seemed like it had been raining for nigh on forever.

“A liquid has been allowed – or induced – to pour down into the walls of this building.”  Hoare turned the scrap of wallpaper so Raft could see it.  “You will note the particular burn marks, flowing downward.  In my experience this indicates that the conflagration started from above.”

“In the ceiling.”  It made sense; Raft had suspected something like that, but had dismissed it.  “We found no evidence of arson.”

Similarly, Hoare’s companion, Dr. Ponsonby, exists as a de facto medical advisor along with the Yard’s own police surgeon, Dr. Pontius Doyle – a huge, ponderous young man with a talent – and a taste – for the macabre and the bizarre:

Raft took the stairs down to the damp and echoing police mortuary and found Doyle sorting through a cardboard box of buttons.  “Trouble finding one to match?” Raft asked.

Doyle gazed at him blankly for a moment, then shrugged.  “See that chap over by the wall?” he asked.  He pointed to a thin, elderly man with a shock of silver hair; Raft indicated that he did indeed see him.  “He had these in his stomach.”

“In his stomach?”  There were easily a couple pounds of buttons in the box.

“In his bleeding stomach – and I’ve spent an hour sorting through them.”  Doyle tossed the box aside with an expression of disgust.  “I spent years at university, working my bollocks off, and for what?  So I can sort through some old bastard’s guts looking for buttons.”

Philemon Raft, Freddie Crook, Jeremy Hoare, John Ponsonby and Pontius Doyle are all characters that the novel requires to function, but they cannot carry the story on their own.  For this, you need secondary characters – those useful jacks of all trade (or jills of all trade) who perform the same service as the ‘character actor’: to give an accurate and memorable impression of a genuine human being.

Sometimes, however, a character will show up and insist that you put him or her in the novel as a permanent fixture – a major character, if you will, someone around whom the narrative revolves.  In my experience this usually happens when I’m writing a pivotal scene.  In a mystery novel, this means that someone dies, a body is found, or a witness disappears.  This is the time when you want to introduce what I call a “walk on” – a one-time-use-only character who walks into a scene, says or does something, and then goes away again.  The point of this type of character is to introduce a piece of information that advances the plot, so I’m likely to use a butler or the footman or a passing street beggar to accomplish this.  Once the butler has uttered his line or the street beggar has pointed out the thief in the crowd of curious gawkers, I don’t need them anymore and what I most want is for them to quietly disappear.

This doesn’t always happen.  Remember that type of character I mentioned earlier in this essay – the one who sits on your shoulder like a medieval tempter and whispers in your ear?  Sometimes a one-time-use-only character will turn into one of these guys.  Suddenly, instead of the butler uttering his one line, “Lady Benson-Phelps, it was the dog who farted” or the cab driver screaming “It was the simoom! The dread simoom!” and going about his business, they try to stick around.  Miss Isabella Hanlon, for example, who tries to waylay Constable Crook while he’s interviewing witnesses, tried her level best to turn into more than merely a tertiary character:

“You’ve hardly touched your pint.”  She reached across and laid her hand on his wrist.  Her touch was cool, but there was an expression in her eyes that he’d seen many times before.  Usually it came from older women – the bored wives of solicitors or politicians who, once they’d clapped eyes on Freddie’s tall, brown-eyed blond beauty, decided to make him their plaything.  “Drink up, constable.”

“Miss Hanlon, could you answer the question?  If you’ve nothing to add, I shall have to be going.  I’m afraid my investigation cannot wait.”  He moved to get up, but she stopped him.

“Please.  Constable, I must beg your forgiveness.”  Her gaze was suddenly downcast; she produced a handkerchief from her reticule and dabbed at her eyes.  Freddie had seen this before, too.  “I lied to you just now when I indicated that I had been slumming.”

“I’m a policeman, Miss Hanlon.”  He tried to keep a note of irritation out of his voice, without success.  “People lie to me all the time.”

“I wasn’t slumming at all.”  She crushed the handkerchief in her fist and pressed it to her eyes.  “I must confess to something terrible.”

Bloody hell.  “Feel free to tell me anything at all, Miss Hanlon.  I shall be the soul of discretion.”

“No doubt you have read Mr. Stead’s ‘Maiden Tribute’, constable?”

“Er…yes, of course.”  A copy of W. T. Stead’s report on child prostitution in London had been circulated to all the Yard’s various departments; Freddie vaguely remembered glancing over it at one time or another.  Even given that London was a veritable hive of iniquity, he found it hard to believe that young women were so readily and regularly enticed into debauchery.

“I shrink to tell you, constable, that the ruination of women is still very much in evidence.”  She shuddered through a heavy sigh that Freddie could have sworn was manufactured.  “I am…in thrall, constable!  I have been since I was a very young woman.”  She gave herself over to sobbing and Freddie hastened to calm her before the pub’s other inhabitants came running. “This man owns me, body and soul!”

“I’m so sorry to hear that, ma’am.  I would suggest you report this to the Yard.  Someone will be only too glad to help you.”  And he won’t have to waste his shillings on sherry, Freddie thought, like I just did.  “If you’ve nothing to tell me about the fire, then I must be going.  Let me summon a cab for you.”

Isabella Hanlon stared at him.  “Summon a cab?”  She blinked tears from her long lashes.  “Constable Crook, I have just poured out my heart to you!  Surely you don’t intend to simply dash away and leave me sitting here like –“

“Ma’am, your difficulty is quite outside my scope.  I am investigating a fire.”  He got up and fetched his coat down from the hook.  “I do apologize but I must be going.”

“You don’t understand.  Oh, constable, this man has broken me.”  She sobbed unashamedly, now and then hiccoughing into her handkerchief.  “He has broken me so badly.”

Freddie extracted a card from his billfold and laid it on the table.  “This gentleman will be only too happy to help you, Miss Hanlon.  I urge you to contact him immediately.”  The card was Inspector Abernathy’s; Freddie had lifted a fistful of them from Abernathy’s desk drawer.  It was his practice to hand them out in just such situations as these.  “I really must go.  Please, stay and enjoy your sherry and warm yourself by the fire.”

The door had scarcely shut behind him when she appeared, running wildly after him, holding her skirts up at the side.  “Constable!  You cannot leave me!  I insist that you come back.  I insist that you stay.”

Freddie had already crossed the street by now and hoped, with the blessing of speed, to leave the girl behind.  He waved her away.  “Go back!  Miss Hanlon, you must go back!”

I won’t give away what happens – you’ll have to buy the book – but suffice to say I took care of that strumpet.  She won’t bother anyone again.

Sometimes, however, a walk-on character is able to convince me that keeping him in the plot is actually a good thing – that he will add to the narrative tension and that his presence will actually help rather than hinder.  This was the case with Sergeant Hugh Lamphrey of Scotland Yard’s J Division.  Originally I had intended Lamphrey to be merely a faceless policeman who had been walking a beat nearby; he was able to offer aid when Freddie Crook needed him.

A crowd began to gather, and he dispatched the cabbie to direct the traffic away from the scene.  Someone had obviously passed the word because a tall, weary-looking police sergeant came loping across the street.  He was lanky, loose-limbed and unshaven, with penetrating, bright blue eyes that regarded Freddie with sardonic humour – and frank appreciation.

“Sergeant Hugh Lamphrey, J Division, out of Bethnal Green.  I was in the area.”  He looked down at Isabella Hanlon.  “Dead, is she?”

“Yes.”  Freddie rose from his knees and shook Lamphrey’s hand.  “Constable Crook, H Division.”

The sergeant held on to his hand, squeezing gently.  His touch was very warm.  “H Division?”  Lamphrey’s  vivid blue eyes seemed to burn through Freddie with the efficacy of phosphorus.

Lamphrey was originally supposed to be the means by which a thing got done but the longer that he lingered, the longer I realised that he might actually be useful.  I wasn’t surprised when he showed up in a later scene:

Lamphrey was sitting on a chair outside Babcock’s office, waiting patiently.  It was his day off but he’d arrived in full uniform, freshly shaven; he nodded to Raft as he stepped into the Commissioner’s office.

Lamphrey is able to corroborate an important point in Freddie’s story and, more importantly, he serves as a point of tension between Raft and Freddie – his interest in Freddie is evident; he is handsome, urbane and intelligent and is possibly the only man who might compete with Raft for Freddie’s affections:

“Married, Sergeant?”  Freddie offered Lamphrey a cigarette from his case and lit one for himself.

“Oh, no, not me.  Not me.”  Lamphrey blew a long plume of smoke into the air.  “I was engaged once, but I had the sense to extricate myself.”

It was unusual to hear a man of sergeant’s rank use a word like ‘extricate’ but Freddie wasn’t about to ask.  Lamphrey was a fair bit older than most sergeants, too – forty-five or perhaps older, judging by the gray at his temples and the fine web of wrinkles fanning out from the corners of his blue eyes.  What was his story?   Why was he still only a sergeant?

“I didn’t care to take on any extra responsibility.  I like to leave time for extramural pursuits.”

Was the sergeant reading his mind? “Such as?”

Lamphrey leaned close enough that Freddie could feel the heat of his body.  He was almost ridiculously clean and smelled of something vaguely citrus.  “I read a lot.”  He raised his eyes slowly, coyly, to gaze at Freddie.  “Do you like to read, Constable Crook?”

In Lamphrey’s case, a character intended to function as a walk-on became so much more, and his presence in the narrative will add much to the story.  You must continually be on guard, however, for walk-on characters who sit on your shoulder like that medieval devil and tell you all the reasons why they should be allowed to stay – and it doesn’t hurt to develop a kind of sixth sense, either, for which characters are likely to work and which will water down your story.  Hugh Lamphrey is a rare bird, a use-once-and-destroy character who clearly has other uses; I look forward to his intemperate dabbling in Raft and Freddie’s love story.

Oh, and I should mention – knowing my proclivity for modelling my characters after actors that I know and love – Hugh Lamphrey takes much of his persona from another wonderfully talented Englishman.  I think you might have heard of him…

Oh dear.  Oh my.  God help us all…  :-)

The suite of rooms that Jeremy Hoare shared with his companion and friend, Doctor John Ponsonby, were located in a quiet street in Westminster, a rather more salubrious location than Raft’s own lodgings in Cheapside.  Raft had always found himself amused by Hoare’s endless attempts at respectability, considering what the disgraced solicitor did to fill his spare time.  Hoare had graduated from Eton and from there went to Cambridge, where he read law and, from all accounts, excelled.  Hoare’s main trouble, as far as Raft could make out from the scanty bits of gossip passed his way, was his laziness, broken only by periods of frenetic activity, during which he sometimes stayed up for days at a time.  It was rumoured that Hoare was a known abuser of the cocaine bottle, and if so, it would account for his highly-strung and very uneven temperament.  As much as Raft admired Hoare’s brains, he disliked visiting the solicitor because he was never sure in what sort of mood he might be received.  Things might have been different if Hoare actually practised the law, but his personal proclivities had seen him ousted from the Inner Temple; since then, he had confined himself to providing informal legal advice to such persons as might apply to him, and acting as amateur detective.

 

Bloody Good Fun – Again!

Some months ago I horrified you all by posting about my little “experiment” involving plaster skulls and animal blood – all in the name of research, you understand, for my murder mysteries.

Well, I’ve been at it again.

The case this time is a mad doctor loose in 1890s London, who’s running around and drilling holes in the heads of the unwitting poor for kicks and possibly for some demented notion of research. (All this takes place in what will be my first Inspector Raft novel, WILLING FLESH, due out shortly from MLR Press.)

The practice of drilling holes in people’s heads – known in medical circles as trepanning or trepanation – has been around for a long time, ever since humans discovered (1) edged weapons; (2) the skulls of other humans.

Given that my killer is running round putting holes in people’s heads, I had to try it myself in order to, er, write about it convincingly.

Yes, that’s it. To write about it.

Not having access to the skulls of the unwitting (although I know a few scurvy characters who’d probably benefit from having something done to their heads) I decided upon the next best thing – a watermelon – and proceeded to inject it full of tomato ketchup and drill holes it in with a makeshift, homemade trephine.

A 19th century trephine looks like this:

I haven’t got one, so my darling Hubby made me one. Mine looked like this:

If you care, that’s a standard 1 and a half inch hole saw, available from any hardware store, attached to the handle of a utility knife. We tried several different variations on the basic 19th c. design but this was the only thing that worked. (Don’t worry – that’s only watermelon flesh in there.)

Why a watermelon, you ask?  The average human head weighs approximately twelve pounds and the skull is more or less a half-inch thick – the dimensions of a nice, fresh, extra-large supermarket watermelon.  (On a purely visceral note, a watermelon makes a satisfying sloshy scrunch when you drill into it – or perhaps that’s only me.)

In order to simulate as closely as possible the trepanation of a dead victim’s skull (I’m not telling you how he killed them, but it wasn’t the hole-drilling that did them in!) we injected tomato ketchup into the watermelon around the area where we planned to drill, and we used a large syringe with a very sharp needle to inject the ketchup into the fruit.

Tomato ketchup in its original state is a bit too thick if you want to simulate blood, so we watered it a bit.  Since the victims were already dead when he started to drill into them, there wouldn’t be any spatter, only a slow ooze into the surrounding tissues. (Dead bodies don’t have any circulation and thus they don’t bleed.)  Injecting the ketchup was harder than we anticipated, because of the melon’s thick rind.  We compensated by drilling a few injection “ports” around the site of the intended wound, and put the “blood” in that way.

Once we’d injected the watermelon with ketchup sufficient to our needs, we began drilling.  Our homemade trephine came into play, and with a few good, hard turns, we were through the “skin” and into the subdural layers that cover and protect the “brain”.

We were surprised at how difficult it was to get through the “membranes” – it took a great deal of strength and patience to cut through to the flesh underneath, but it was worth it.  Our experiment yielded some valuable information about our murderer and his preferred modus operandi.

Once we had cut into the watermelon, we were able to observe the oozing “blood” around the wound – exactly the sort of blood flow pattern that Inspector Raft would expect to see when he examined the bodies.

Luckily for our murderer, the operation was relatively tidy: a quiet oozing of blood around the wound but not much else besides that.

He would, of course, take his trephine with him.

 

What do you think about published fanfic?

I don’t mean the kind of fanfic that many of us have written in our time, the sort of fanfic in ‘zines and online where we aren’t making any money.

But the rash of fanfic that seems to be sprouting like mushrooms, particularly in the historical novel sections of bookshops.

Following successful sequels and prequels such as Scarlett and Wide Sargasso Sea, and the courts allowing sequels of Les Miserables,  a bandwagon has been cobbled together, people have leapt on it, and now we have derivative works/pastiches/call them what you will, all over the place.

Just look at this list of Austen “inspired” fiction. It’s staggering.  Now I know that Austen lovers hoover this kind of thing up, but what what do you think?

On a purely personal level, it gets me rather hot under the collar.  Most of the writers I know are slaving away with their books, sweating over plot, screaming when their own original characters misbehave, tearing their hair out over locations.  And then there’s THIS stuff.  Which is a bit of a cheat, imho.  Having written fanfic, I know how much easier it is.  I used to write Harry Potter fanfic and compared with original fiction it’s so much easier.  Want to know what your characters are wearing? No problems, JK Rowling has already given you the styles that were around.  Want to know what your characters look like?  No problems – the description is already there.  Want your character to travel from A to B? No worries, there are many devices. Just choose one. Floo, broomstick, apparating, and so on.  The writer doesn’t have to work a fraction as hard as the original writer because they are simply piggybacking on what’s already in place.

Now we have the Austen-horror sub-genre, which seemed to have started as a bit of a giggle, and now we have everyone writing it as fast as they can.

I can’t help but feel, why do I bother?

What inspired this rant?

THIS.  James Fairfax by Jane Austen!!!  and Adam Campan which is (as far as I know) the first gay Austen inspired novel.

Apparently, it has caused a bit of a flurry in the Austen plagiarist inspired writers’ camp because NO NO NO we can’t have homos in Austen-Land.  I don’t know where this kerfuffle is occurring however. Hayden Thorne pointed the book out to me and said that there has been an adverse reaction to it.  If it portrays gay marriage, then I’m not surprised, though.

I find myself very conflicted.  On one hand of course I’m pleased that there’s another gay historical, but on the other (and this hand is weightier) I feel that – gah! – if you are going to the trouble of writing it – make it original.

Lots of people write fanfic of original works, and the classics are very popular. Here’s a few figures (courtesy of Tracey Pennington) to show how popular they are on FanFiction Net.

Jane Eyre 166.
Wuthering Heights– 59
Les Miserables –1,771
Count of Monte Cristo–24
Of Mice and Men–66
Hunchback of Notre Dame–239.

Fanfic is fine. Fanfic is great!  I loved writing it.  I’m not saying for one minute that fanfic can’t be creative, but the one tenet that was dinned into my head was “you don’t make a profit from fanfic. You do not make a profit from OTHER PEOPLE’S WORK.” The best place for fanfic is in fanfic forums. Not on Amazon.

For me, whether it’s in copyright or not doesn’t come into it.  I had a great idea for one of Shakespeare’s plays and I really really wanted to write it, but I can’t now.  I just can’t.

After all – Lord of the Rings is out of copyright in a year or two. There are over 40,000 stories on FFN for that fandom.  What will we see in a couple of years?  Aragorn, Legolas and the Zombies?  The Haunted Hobbits?

Where does it end?

 

Correction to my interview – Bristlecone Pine Press

In the interview posted yesterday, I stated that the very first book the Bristlecone Pine Press published was L.A. Heat by P.A. Brown which was wrong. Two months prior, I had launched Bristlecone with The Erotic Etudes by E.L. van Hine, a lyrical and deeply moving story about Robert Schumann, imagined from his diaries and writings. Erastes favorably reviewed the book on Speak Its Name; her review can be read here.

The Erotic Etudes can be purchased in a Kindle version from Amazon.com; for a variety of devices from Mobipocket.com and in print, also from Amazon.

My apologies to the author, E.L. van Hine for the error and oversight. Certainly I should have known better!

Leslie

 

Interview with Leslie H Nicoll of Bristlecone Pine Press

It is quite often that we hear of the launch of a new epublisher, but Bristlecone Pine Press is not your typical epublisher and its raison d’etre and modus operandi are both unusual and (in my opinion) a pretty damn good idea.

Bristlecone Pine Press are producing the ebook versions of Frost Fair, Ransom and Winds of Change in tandem with the print release from Cheyenne Publishing. I grabbed Leslie and put the same questions to her as I had asked Mark:

What made you want to get into publishing?

A number of factors came together at the same time; it was, as they say, “a perfect storm.” First, I bought an Amazon Kindle in 2008 and was excited about the new technology. Although ebooks have been around for many years, widespread acceptance has been slow in coming but I think we are finally at the tipping point. Amazon has been supportive of small publishers by having minimal barriers to entry to distribute Kindle books through their catalog. Second, I own my own business (Maine Desk LLC, founded in 2001) so creating a publishing imprint as a division of the business was easy to do and a natural fit as a new venture of the core business. Third, I am, by profession, an editor (and nurse), so I know the nuts and bolts of the publishing business. Last, over the past few years I have been more involved in fiction (writing my own as well as editing/supporting others). Bristlecone Pine Press provided an outlet to distribute some of these products.

What’s it like on the other side of that publishing/writer divide?

To me, the publishing side is where I’ve been for years and years. I am having more fun exploring fiction writing and getting my feet wet in that department.

What made you choose these books for your big launch?

Mark’s answer to this question really sums it up. Because of our collaboration on the military history anthology, as well as his bringing out L.A. Mischief in paperback, we knew we worked well together. When the opportunity to take on these new titles presented itself, I said to him, “Let’s go for it.” He agreed and we did.

Where do you see your firm in five years?

Right now, Maine Desk is the core business and Bristlecone is a very small part of it—almost a sideline. I’d like to get to the point that BCPP is generating 50% of the revenue for day-to-day business expenses, so that I can really spend the time I want with authors and their books, helping them produce very high quality products.

What do I do if I want to submit a book to Bristlecone Pine Press?

My original vision for Bristlecone was that I would publish ebooks for print books that did not have an ebook counterpart. The very first book I published was L.A. Heat by P.A. Brown, which fell into that category. I published a few others and then Pat surprised me by telling me she had an original, unpublished Chris and David story (main characters in L.A. Heat). I read it and it was very good, so I decided to publish it, even though it was not in print. That book is L.A. Mischief. Six months after the ebook was published, Mark and Cheyenne Publishing brought it out in paperback, and I am pleased to say, it’s been selling like hotcakes.

That’s a long answer for saying…if an author has a published print book that doesn’t have an ebook counterpart, please follow the guidelines at http://www.bcpinepress.com/htdocs/submissions.html to query me. If an author has a new, original book that has not been published, send a query to publisher@bcpinepress.com and pitch the idea to me. I might take it on if it tickles my fancy.

 

Interview with Mark Probst of Cheyenne Publishing

It’s not often there’s a new publisher in town, and even less often when you consider that this is a publisher specializing in GBLT historic fiction. I managed to catch Mark on the eve of Cheyenne Publishing’s relaunch of some of the most prestigious novels of the m/m historical romance genre to ask him a few questions about this new direction. In addition to being the owner of Cheyenne Publishing, Mark is the author of The Filly, the gay YA novel which was one of the books at the center of the Amazonfail bust up this spring.

Many thanks for agreeing to this interview, Mark.

What made you want to get into publishing?
First and foremost—my love of good literature. My mother was a voracious reader and she instilled that value in me when I was very young. Secondly, because gay-positive books were not readily available when I was growing up, I wanted to do something to fill that void. So I wrote a gay young-adult novel of the type that I would have liked when I was younger. The publishing part came about when I wasn’t able to get my story published; I decided to start my own publishing house and then later, when people started asking if I would consider publishing others, I thought, why not?

What’s it like on the other side of that publishing/writer divide?
Well, having been on the other side I know what it’s like to have door after door after door shut in your face with a flippant “Sorry, not for us” tossed at you. And now I have authors contacting me to consider their work. So here I am in a position I really don’t like where I have to turn authors down, and I know how frustrating it is for them. But on the other hand, finding a fresh new talent is very rewarding. The submission call I did in collaboration with Bristlecone Pine Press for the military anthology, turned up a very talented young writer, Jordan Taylor, who hadn’t been published before and was selected over many other applicants who had been previously published.

What made you choose these books for your big launch?
I was acquainted with Erastes and Lee Rowan though some online writing groups that we all belong to, and I’ve been a fan of their work. Frost Fair and Speak Its Name were books that I personally felt were examples of some of the best historical gay fiction that had been published in the last few years. I heard that they were looking to move these books to a different publisher. Leslie Nicoll of Bristlecone Pine Press and I were collaborating on a couple of projects where Cheyenne was publishing the print books and Bristlecone was publishing the digital counterparts, so she and I discussed it and mutually decided to make an offer to pick up all of Erastes’ and Lee’s books from this other publisher. And we were quite overjoyed when they both accepted our offer.

Where do you see your firm in five years?
Probably not where you’d guess. I don’t want Cheyenne Publishing to have grown into some huge company that gets bought out by another bigger publisher. No, I’d still like to be running a small publishing house, but to have attracted enough of a consumer base to be able to grow some. In five years I hope to have built up a strong line of gay young-adult titles that are predominately rooted in the historical genre. I’d hope that maybe by then when readers are chatting in forums about gay historical books, the name Cheyenne would be one that gets mentioned often as a favorite.

What do I do if I want to submit a book to Cheyenne Publishing?

For Cheyenne Publishing, all you need to do is email a query letter with a brief synopsis. If I like what you have to offer, I’ll invite you to send in a partial or perhaps even the full manuscript.

 

Cheyenne Publishing/Bristlecone Press

Join us starting Tuesday at Speak Its Name http://groups. yahoo.com/ group/SpeakItsN ame/ for a celebration of the relaunch of some popular m/m historical titles and a sneak preview of a new m/m historical anthology. We’ll have interviews, chats, excerpts, and prizes!

Cheyenne Publications, a small GLBT-oriented press helmed by publisher and author Mark Probst, will be publishing the print versions of Erastes’ Frost Fair, Lee Rowan’s own Royal Navy series (formerly the Articles of War series), and Speak its Name, a trilogy that includes Charlie Cochrane’s first published work, Aftermath, Erastes’ Hard and Fast and Lee Rowan’s Gentleman’s Gentleman.

Leslie Nichol, head of Bristlecone Pine Press, will handle the e-book editions.  Frost Fair, Ransom and Winds of Change are available as ebook versions in all the normal places. Both publishers will be on hand to answer questions, so if you have questions about the nuts-and-bolts, here’s your chance!

Tuesday: Publisher interviews, Author chats with Erastes and Lee Rowan and excerpts from the three releases: Frost Fair, Ransom, and Winds of Change.

Wednesday: Spotlights on Eye of the Storm and Speak Its Name Trilogy, coming September 14 and October 26.

Friday: What else is coming from Cheyenne Publishing and Bristlecone Pine Press — Hidden Conflict: Tales of Lost Voices from Battle.

* * * *

The lineup from Cheyenne and BCPP (and yes, print and e-books on the same schedule!)

August 1, 2009: Frost Fair, Ransom and Winds of Change (Royal Navy series)

September 14, 2009 Eye of the Storm (Royal Navy series)

October 26 2009 Speak Its Name Trilogy

November 11: Hidden Conflict: Tales of Lost Voices from Battle

December 7, 2009 Walking Wounded

January 1, 2010 Home is the Sailor (NEW Royal Navy novel!)

March 1, 2010 Sail Away (anthology, Royal Navy series)

If you’re not a member of Speak Its Name, all you have to do is request membership –  it’s invite-only to keep out the porno spammers.  (And hey, how many of us really want or need to enhance our male members or look at grainy pictures of ’slutty housewives’? )

See you there!

 

When Things Become Other Things, Story Ensues.

I will admit: when it comes to the inspirations for my stories, I’m a pretty omnivorous creature, and while I don’t watch television as such (the plethora of “reality” shows makes me want to slit my wrists with uncooked pasta) I’ve gotten rather good at Hoovering up influences from other sources.

What usually happens is that I’ll get interested in Thing One – a series of books, a stage play, a movie, an Old Time Radio show &tc. – and my newfound love for it triggers an immersion response.  For weeks I’ll literally soak my brain in it, reveling in the characters, the settings, the languages and dialect until I’ve had it all.  A first reading/viewing/listening usually turns into two or even three and if there are particular parts I like better than others, I tend to hover salaciously over them, lingering on the things I love best.  This lingering, this perverse titillation in turn generates an interest in Thing Two – usually some offshoot, ‘remake’, ‘reboot’ or ’spinoff’ of Thing One.   What happens THEN is that Thing One and Thing Two get together in my brain and do the horizontal mambo, shaking their hips and wiggling their wiggly bits and in general seducing the hell out of each other until the, er, ‘climactic’ event.

Yes, it was good for me, too. *lights cigarette*

Case in point being an obscure-as-hell Old Time Radio drama called Rocky Jordan which, according to Wikipedia,

“was a radio series about an American restaurateur in Cairo who each week became involved in some kind of mystery or adventure. The show was broadcast on CBS from October 31^st 1948 to September 10^th 1950. and then again from June 27^th 1951 to August 22^nd 1951. The character of Rocky Jordan had been introduced to listeners in a similar show called A Man Named Jordan that was broadcast in 1945 but set in Istanbul rather than Cairo^.”

 

Charlie does lunch with the RNA again

Today was the bi-monthly local Romantic Novelists’ Association lunch. I love going to these – not only is it held in a nice venue, and I get lunch out, the event makes me feel young and rather techno whizzy (as opposed to feeling old and techno Neanderthal, which is my usual state).

Out of about fourteen people present, there was an author in her thirties and then, at a sprightly fifty-one, I was second youngest. (Apart from my sixteen year old daughter, of whom more anon.) If I was being stereotypical I’d say that most of my fellow romance writers look just like you’d expect them to. And there’s nothing wrong with that, in fact it’s rather reassuring.

It’s always interesting when we start chatting about how we meet other authors, promote, deal with publishers, etc. A number of people aren’t into online stuff at all, which makes me think I’m cutting edge, although it was interesting that it was the youngest author who thought one of the reasons Kindle wouldn’t take off was not being able to read it in the bath. And one of the more mature ladies who said that Kindle was the way forward, once they sorted out the technology and was outlining its many advantages. (So don’t judge a book by its cover…)

The speaker was Jean Fullerton; it’s always fascinating to hear successful authors talk about how they got their break and she was particularly interesting when she spoke about her experiences with the RNA new writers scheme, which had been decidedly curate’s eggy. She is dyslexic, so had taken the decision to have her submissions professionally produced to create a good impression (that rang bells, given the four macaronis’ experiences on the acquisitions team for ‘I Do’).

I sat with a different group of people this time, so had to go through the whole “What do you write?” “Gay romance, Edwardian gay romantic suspense.” Slightly different responses this time – not negative but a distinct hint of people thinking “I really don’t know what to say in reply”. Interesting to have Number two daughter listening in, as she picked up this, too. The pro-Kindle lady was least nonplussed, comparing the genre to Sarah Waters’ work, and the conversation neatly turned to doing historical research for novels. Still, I got invited to another writers’ event (a group who meet at Borders) so I wasn’t persona non grata.

And as for my beloved daughter? Another book you can’t judge by her cover. She creates a rather ditzy impression, so people are left gobsmacked when she confesses to wanting to read medicine. She doesn’t say a lot when she’s with strangers but what she says is very perceptive. When asked if she had any writerly ambitions, quick as a flash she said “Writing’s a bit too much inward looking for me. Authors are in a room somewhere, working on their own. I prefer things where I can interact with other people.”

Which left silence around the table and me with real food for thought.

 

Historical Accuracy: Why It Matters

by Leslie H. Nicoll

If you want to be a Macaroni, you have to be a stickler for historical accuracy. Not to scare anyone off, but to me, half the fun of writing historical fiction is doing the research. I love looking up things and learning new tidbits of information. Doesn’t everyone?

This is on my mind because I just finished The Help by Kathryn Stockett. While it was a very good book and I enjoyed it very much, there were a couple of historical anachronisms that I picked up on instantly. Imagine my amazement when I got to the Acknowledgments and Postscript and the author actually admitted to them! Worse, she did not give a reason for why they were included and why she did not change them.

The errors, as she states, were, “Using the song, ‘The Times They Are A-Changin,’ even though it was not released until 1964 and Shake ‘n Bake, which did not hit the shelves until 1965.”

Certainly Bob Dylan is an iconic folk singer, but there were plenty of folkies on the radio waves in 1962 and 1963 (the principal time of the action in the book). If she wanted to stick with Dylan, why not use “Blowin in the Wind,” released in 1963, which certainly addresses issues of freedom and change. Peter, Paul and Mary would be another choice, with hits such as “Lemon Tree” (maybe not too applicable, although the character listening to the music does have a rocky-to-non-existent love life) or “If I Had a Hammer.” My point is, while “The Times They Are A-Changin” is compelling, I don’t think it is compelling enough to rewrite history to include it.

Then there’s the Shake ‘n Bake error. Shake ‘n Bake is mentioned three times in the book, in two different scenes. The first:

Miss Celia puts a raw chicken thigh in, bumps the bag around. “Like this? Just like the Shake ‘n Bake commercials on the tee-vee?”

“Yeah,” I say and run my tongue up over my teeth because if that’s not an insult, I don’t know what is. “Just like the Shake ‘n Bake.”

So the maid is teaching her employer to cook and the employer (Miss Celia) is all about shortcuts and making it easy. Fine, but does it have to be Shake ‘n Bake, three years before it was invented? How about a Duncan Hines cake mix or Betty Crocker brownie mix? Or, it the author wants to subtly address issues of race and class (the overarching theme of the book), why not have her suggest Aunt Jemima pancake mix? That would certainly be insulting to the maid, Minny, moreso than Shake ‘n Bake, which didn’t even exist.

The other time Shake ‘n Bake is mentioned in the book is in this line, “Wondering if, for no good reason I started thinking about Sears and Roebuck or Shake ‘n Bake, would it be because some Illinoian had thought it two days ago. It gets my mind off my troubles for about five seconds.” Just draw a blue line through that Shake ‘n Bake. No need to even include it.

As I said at the beginning, I enjoy doing the research for writing a historical story. I just finished a 33,000 word novella (due to be published in six months). The story takes place in the era of World War II and after.  Some of the things I learned while researching various facts for the book:

• Western Union delivery methods, in both the city and the country. In the city, they had delivery men who rode bikes. Out in the country, the Western Union operator was responsible for delivering telegrams, usually in the afternoon after receiving the telegrams in the morning.
• Gone With the Wind premiered in December, 1939, but did not go into wide release in the US until 1941. For six months in 1940, it was in shown in “reserved seat, roadshow engagements,” a format for showing movies that was very popular in the 1940s and 1950s, but is non-existent now. (Note: Gone With the Wind doesn’t even show up in the book. The characters go see The Wizard of Oz, instead, which came out in the summer of 1939.)
• In 1942, the Queen Mary was transporting more than 15,000 US servicemen to England, in preparation for the D-Day invasion. Off the coast of Ireland, the Queen Mary collided with—literally sliced through—one of her escort ships, the HMS Curacao. The Curacao quickly sunk and 338 men perished; only 102 of the crew survived. This tragedy was not made public until after the war ended. Even now, it is sort of hushed up. It is not a proud moment in British and US naval history.
• US families who had loved ones killed in Europe in WWII did have the option to have the soldier’s body sent home to the US for final burial, although it was a complicated and time consuming process that could take years.
• Gay bars in New York city in the early 1960s were dingy, dark, dumpy places that served overpriced drinks, didn’t meet basic sanitation codes, and were run by the Mob. There was a crackdown on all sorts of “undesirable activity,” including known homosexual hangouts, in New York in 1962 and 1963, as Mayor Wagner was trying to “clean up the city” for all the visitors who were expected to come to New York to attend the World’s Fair. Reading about gay bars got me off on a tangent about bath houses and I learned a lot about those, too. In the end, my character didn’t even go to a gay bar, he just went to the bar in his hotel. The logistics of getting him from Madison Avenue and 45th Street to Greenwich Village, location of most of the gay bars, was just too convoluted.

HMS Curacao

Those are just a few facts off the top of my head—I could come up with plenty more. My point is, if you are going to step up to the plate to write historical fiction, then you need to accept the fact that part of the writing process will involve research and fact checking. If you skip this important component of the process, you run the risk of making finicky readers—like me—unhappy.

Kathryn Stockett, shame on you.

Leslie H. Nicoll writes fiction under the pen name of E. N. Holland. Her novella, Our One and Only, will be included in the military history anthology, Hidden Conflict: Tales from Lost Voices in Battle, due to be published in January 2010 by Bristlecone Pine Press and Cheyenne Publishing. You can learn more at her Facebook page, www.facebook.com/leslie.nicoll or LiveJournal, lazylfarm.livejournal.com.

 

From the Sublime to the Ridiculous

“From the sublime to the ridiculous is merely a step.” (Napoleon Bonaparte)

Writing a novel about Napoleon Bonaparte – that is to say, THE Napoleon, the one who came before and lent his name to all the others – can best be described as a foray into both the sublime and the ridiculous.  Sublime, for a novelist, insofar as the wealth of material available upon which to build a narrative is nigh inexhaustible; ridiculous because, to quote Ecclesiastes, there really is nothing new under the Sun.

What most people know of Napoleon Bonaparte has been told to them by others – well-meaning teachers of history, library books, the occasional television documentary that purports to show “the great man” through his military victories and his often-demonstrated might as a civil administrator.  Most people – and by that I mean all people – know little or nothing about the ‘real’ Napoleon, a state of matters which tends to galvanise the willing novelist into action.

Ay, there’s the rub: in a life of such scope, where do you begin?  How is it possible to capture the aspect of a man whose entire life, it seems, was lived in the public view? (In this way, Napoleon can be said to be the Brad Pitt of his time; Josephine, the Jennifer Aniston.  Naturally his second Empress, the vapid and bovine Marie-Louise, fulfills the Angelina role.)  In short, what does one put in – and what does one leave out?

There are as many “versions” of Napoleon as there are portraits and indeed caricatures; the novelist’s intent is that her finished effort resemble the former rather than the latter, and so begins the time-consuming process of sifting through the facts.  It goes without saying that any historical novelist worth her salt will have done her research, and that exhaustively. (I understand and accept that this opinion places me in the minority – but I’ve never been afraid of hard work.  Where I come from – a little island in the middle of the sea; have you heard of it? – the ability to work is considered a virtue.)   To write about Napoleon at all, never mind in a fictional context, is arguably a task of both folly and hubris, but it is, ultimately, work.  When I first began planning my novel, Dispatches From St. Helena (an m/m romance of Napoleon) I read everything upon which I could lay hands: scholarly texts (I have a background in academia, so this naturally followed); novels; magazine and journal articles; websites devoted to the great man and whatever else I could find.  At the end of some three years devoted entirely to research (c.f.: hard work) I had amassed literal volumes of material about Napoleon, and I asked myself: what do I leave in? what do I leave out?  I knew I didn’t want to concentrate entirely on the military aspects, since that was a topic for scholars and it had been done to death.   I also didn’t want to write about his family, his supposed neuroses, his horses, his physical ailments (I, too, have chronic stomach problems and a family history of stomach cancer; this was cutting a little too close to the bone) or his numerous amours with various giggly females in Empire-waist dresses. I wasn’t interested in dissecting his psyche or tracking, CSI-like, the supposed causes of his death. (Stomach cancer? Bleeding ulcers? Poison? Hepatitis?)  What caught my attention, and what has been given a very scanty treatment in both scholarly books and popular media, is his bisexuality.  Napoleon, according to many reputable sources (as well as his own admissions on more than one occasion) was attracted to men as well as to women; the most notable of these (at least from an historical viewpoint) was Tsar Alexander I, of whom Napoleon said, “If Alexander were a woman, I would make him my mistress.”  The two men displayed an enormous affiliation and appreciation for one another and, during Napoleon’s time with Alexander, the two were seen on more than one occasion holding hands. (Even given the possibility that homosocial mores in the early 19th century differed from today, this is unusual behaviour for men of that time.) Add to this Napoleon’s love for certain of his officers (he lay weeping all night on the grave of one of them, inconsolable) and his affectionate familiarity with his staff. (He sat in the lap of his secretary, Louis Fauvelet de Bourrienne, to give dictation.)  Napoleon himself reported that, upon seeing an attractive man he felt sensations in “that area which may not be mentioned” and, although it is debatable whether he actively practised manlove, there is ample evidence that he certainly felt it.

The small boat rocked capriciously on the uneven swells of the River Niemen. Already, I could see the Tsar standing on the raft, waiting patiently for me, his hands folded behind his back.  From this distance, he was tall and blond, with pale skin and long hands that reminded me of Talleyrand.  I wondered if I would like him or not; I wondered if our negotiations would be successful.

“Your Majesty must mind his step—it’s a little tricky there.” Duroc handed me up out of the boat as if I were a child; I was stabbed with a sudden, sickening flashback of crossing from Corsica with Papa and Joseph, the smell of Mama’s perfume as she leaned close to whisper, ‘Courage!’ The side of the boat tumbled through an arc as I put my foot upon the raft; my legs trembled as though I were full out in heavy seas, and then a strong hand reached and grabbed my arm.

I looked up into eyes as blue as the azure skies above, and a face of surpassing beauty, an Adonis. “Welcome to our raft, Your Majesty. It is my express wish that you be as comfortable as possible during your stay, however brief.”

A tingle raced up my arm, burst in the centre of my chest, spreading heat along my limbs.  Astonished, I burst into nervous laughter. “Mon Dieu, but the seas are high today!” I reached to clasp his hand in mine, leaned to kiss his cheek, but he shifted slightly, his footing uneven on the raft, and my salute missed its intended mark and landed squarely on his mouth -

- the impression of heat, the smoothness of his lips, a flicker of thought exhaled on a sigh, and I was standing upright again. “Your Majesty.” I clung to his hand as if I would drown; the reassuring clasp of his fingers was all that stayed my footing on that unstable platform.

Here, then, was my topic: I would write a tale of Napoleon in his final exile, and of the young Englishman who befriends him and with whom he ultimately falls in love.  Having narrowed it down, I was ready to begin but this also presented problems: because the novel is about Napoleon primarily, I would need to offer my readers some aspects of Napoleon’s life – those aspects which he would most likely discuss with his new companion, the Englishman Tobias Funt.  What would Funt want to know?  What sorts of things would he ask?  What would anyone want to know, if they had the opportunity to talk to Napoleon Bonaparte, live and in person? (How tall are you? Probably – and for the record, Napoleon in his stocking feet stood five foot six and a half inches tall by modern measurements.  The often misrepresented height of five foot two is in old French inches – pouces – and, when translated into modern measurements, equals five and a half feet tall.  Now you know.)

So I decided that Funt would ask the things that nobody else knew: What really happened at Waterloo?  What was it like in Egypt? Did you love Josephine? What happened in Moscow?

Now I had a framework from which to proceed, and a way to sift through the piles of research materials I had amassed.  It would be a far from easy task, but a worthwhile one, because I could create a story-within-a-story, using their romance as the “container” to hold the stories that Napoleon recounts to Funt.  I could position Funt as a kind of satellite, whirling in orbit around the great man and drawn to him by powerful forces he does not entirely understand:

I found myself at last at Waterloo.

I saw the Emperor Napoleon flee and I followed him: making my horse silent on the muddy field, always keeping well back of him, afraid that he would discover me.   And in those dark and lonely hours as I tracked him, I was aware of him: a man like me, dissimilar in form and perhaps in aspect, but as human as I am and prey to the misguided mercies of his star’s capricious orbit. Several times I was so close that I might have reached out to him and touched him, laid my gloved hand upon his back, offered him some solace from the flask I carried in my saddle. I listened to him breathing; I listened to him weeping.  I listened when he whispered to himself: prayers or curses, I could not tell.

Funt would be for Napoleon a kind of mirror even as Napoleon reflected Funt back to himself.  The kinds of questions that Funt chooses to ask reveal much:

“And so it ends with Elba?” I turned the lamp up a little bit, the better to see him in the darkness.

“You know better than that.” He reached a hand to clasp mine, his fingers cold and his skin very dry. It wouldn’t be long now…no, it wouldn’t be long at all.

“How did you escape Elba?” I knew the story, but I wanted to hear him say it.

“My keeper was good enough to visit his Italian mistress.” His voice was hoarse, rasping in his throat. He’d had nothing to drink since early that morning: everything that was given, he’d vomited it back up. And some hours ago he’d suffered a series of painful bowel movements: black, tarry, almost certainly suffused with blood. It wouldn’t be long at all, now. “Eh bien, I took the opportunity granted me.” He exhaled on a long sigh. “But, that is gone and past now.”

For Funt, as for myself, I need to know: what story does my character want to tell?  The fact that my character is, arguably, one of history’s great conquerors is immaterial; like a journalist I must get to the core of my material.  I must find out what it is my character has to say – and, by choosing what to promote and what to conceal, I create a portrait of Napoleon, as well as a portrait of myself.   I create a Napoleon in exile, a Prometheus chained to a rock, a man who remembers – as the popular Coldplay song says – when he ruled the world.

I began to laugh. “Who sent you? Is this some kind of joke? I suppose you think this is amusing, do you?” I had unwittingly spoken to him in Corsican, my accent  coarse and rusty with disuse; he did not understand me, could not understand me. “A joke, an English joke, no?” I’d carried it here with me, all the way from Waterloo: the stink of the battlefield. It clung to my clothes, my hands and my hair; it lodged in the back of my throat and the inside of my nose: burnt powder, guts and blood, sweat and vomit, piss.

This stranger, this Tobias Funt, speaking French, his gentleman’s hands upon my arms, sinking down beside me as I fell to the floor. And speaking quickly, as if he feared discovery: “Your Majesty must not reveal my presence here, I beg of you. I will be on St. Helena when Your Majesty arrives, and you must remember me, Tobias Funt.”  I felt his breath against my ear.

 

Sunday in the Mall With George…

I’m the sort of writer that writes the way Method actors act: you know, you become your character.  This supposedly puts you in the (possibly, although I’m not entirely sure) position of seeing what your character sees, hearing what he hears, tasting whatever he puts in his mouth (yes, really) and, by extension, feeling whatever that sad bastard happens to be feeling.  For me, getting to really know my character requires this sort of internal exercise, but I realise it may not work for everyone.  You have to have the sort of mind that readily relinquishes control to a completely imaginary entity and a personality that is comfortable playing to the vagaries of said character’s…erm, character. One thing those old Method acting coaches always taught their charges was to take the character with you wherever you went, ergo, if I am, say, romancing a 1930s racketeer with a penchant for crooked business and a lust for pretty boys, it might be useful to take him to my workplace, and to spend my day “working as” Nino Moretti. (n.b.: not a particularly good idea if your workplace is, say, an accountant’s office or the tax department.)  Then, when I’ve spent the day ‘as Nino’ I can use what ‘Nino’ say and thought and felt and tasted to write him with much more depth that I could otherwise.  (It’s probably not a good idea to start talking in a broad, New Yoik accent, just in case Da Boss tinks you’re a joik. Trust me.) An alternative to this technique is to take the character with you when you go somewhere, to imagine him accompanying you as you go about your daily tasks.  This latter is what I did with George.

George is a taxi dancer – essentially a professional dancer who gets paid by-the-dance; George lives during the Great Depression, so he’s grateful just to have a job, when so many of his buddies are living under a bridge or some hastily-constructed Hooverville of tin-and-cardboard shacks. George is in his late thirties, and is dreadfully elegant, with dark hair and dark eyes.  Since so many of my characters arrive ‘already cast’ in my mind’s eye, it was no surprise to me that he resembled the actor/dancer George Raft.

I wanted to get to know “George” better (he doesn’t have a last name yet) so I decided to take him shopping with me.  I intended to get a new bathrobe – you know, one of those big fuzzy ones that’s like a towel with a belt – and I figured it would be fun to take him with me, as it were, and see what sorts of impressions I might get about this new character.  I knew he was very elegant and very soignee, as the French say, and so, taking him shopping with me (even for something as pedestrian as a bathrobe) would yield interesting insights, no?

We had to drive to get to the shops and boy, let me tell you: George really enjoyed my modern car.  I mean, he really enjoyed it, especially the way the scenery flashed by so fast at what, to him, seemed to be lightning speed.  I couldn’t get George to put on a seat belt (they hadn’t been invented when he was around) and he insisted on twisting around in his seat to see things as we drove past them.  This was very distracting.  In addition, I discovered that he had a habit of grabbing my arm to get my attention, which was about as conducive to safe driving as my dog’s liking for riding in my lap. “Look at that!” Everything was Something Huge that I needed to notice. “Did you see that dame’s hair? Hey look at that dumb palooka with the bike!” and so on and so forth.

The other thing about George?  He smoked. A lot. And when he’d smoked a cigarette down to the butt, he dropped it on the floor and stomped on it.  He was quite crestfallen when I explained that the shops into which we would be going didn’t allow smoking of any kind.  He looked at me as if I’d just landed from the moon: “Whatta ya mean, they don’t allow smoking?  This is a free country, ain’t it?”

George, I discovered, is a backseat driver.  While I was parking the car, he continually shouted instructions as to how and where I ought to leave the vehicle. “Don’t park by that guy.  Watch out for that lamp post! Hey, park in there.”  When I explained that those parking spaces with the blue paint were for the disabled, he treated me to an incredulous look: “They let them people drive?”

Ah, George…such a product of his environment and of his times…

I took George into the shop with me and he was immediately entranced by the staggering (to him, anyway) display of goods for sale.  Some of the gentlemen’s clothing he found truly bewildering (swimwear, for instance) and some others, incomprehensible (surfer jams and Hawaiian shirts.)  He lingered over the double-breasted suits (as expected) and handled the neckties rather more firmly than was appropriate.

But George was at his most astonishing in the Ladies’ Department.  He wondered aloud if it were appropriate for me to take him “in with all these frilly things” and he seemed very worried that the older saleswoman with her glasses on the requisite chain around her neck wouldn’t take it in her head to turf him out.  He wouldn’t stop touching the underthings and the sheer variety of brassieres and other unmentionables sent him into transports of delight and, it seemed, nostalgia. (He was hell-bent on telling me about a “dame” he knew once in Chicago whose eyes he had made “roll back in her head.”)

George had his opinions on my wardrobe choices.  It was pointless to explain to him that I needed a plain towelling bath robe, something with which to sop up the water absorbed by my flesh when I took a shower.  He requested – nay, insisted – that I buy something “a bit more sexy” and produced for my delectation a selection of silk robes, all very short and all ridiculously inappropriate for someone of my (1) age; (2) girth.

“But George,” I said, avoiding the stares of salesladies who obviously thought I was insane, given that I was talking to an invisible and imaginary man, “those are no good.  I need something with heft, something to soak up water.”  He was singularly put out when I acquired a pale blue towelling robe and resolved to purchase it immediately.  I had thought – foolishly – that this would set the matter to rest.

Do I need to tell you that George talked me back into the lingerie department and I left with:

• 2 black lace, plunging front bras;
• a pair of black stockings with lace tops;
• 2 pair of Spanx
• 1 pair of naughty panties.

Never take your characters shopping.  Especially when your character is a fashion-forward taxi dancer with a penchant for naughty undies.

Boy, did he show me!

 

The Hardest Part of a M/M Historical Romance…

No, not that! While I prefer my heroes hard in my m/m historical romances, I don’t find it particularly difficult to get them hard. No, what I’m referring to is the HEA (happily ever after) in a m/m historical romance, Regency-set romances to be specific.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Regency time period in English history, it technically began in 1811, when the king’s son (George, Prince of Wales) was appointed Regent, and ended in 1820,when King George III died. But since the king’s illness (i.e. madness) started earlier than 1811, an extended or greater Regency time period is commonly used and goes from around 1790 to 1830. I personally prefer to set my books around 1820, give or take a couple years. Why? Because men’s trousers became accepted as eveningwear around 1816. I prefer my men in trousers versus breeches or pantaloons. Plus, I’m not a huge Napoleonic war buff. Therefore, I set the time frame for my stories accordingly.

The Regency is bracketed by the Georgian era (think powered wigs and highly stylized clothing – i.e. the movie Dangerous Liaisons) and the Victorian era (think uptight and VERY restrained). The gency era is very elegant, with a strong emphasis on proper manners and spotless reputations. You get a mix of the extravagance of the Georgian era with the Victorian preoccupation with maintaining appearances. Makes for a very interesting time period to write in…at least I think so. And yes, I just had to throw the picture of Colin Firth from the movie Pride and Prejudice in there – I think Mr. Darcy just epitomized the Regency period. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it really is a shame Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley never hooked up. They would have been so great together!!

All right. Enough of the primer on the Regency and of my own fantasies involving Bingley and Darcy. Back to the topic of this post. In the Regency time period homosexuality was not just frowned upon by Society, but it was illegal. If you were convicted of ‘buggery’, you could be sentenced to death. And yes, they did have trials and they did hang men if convicted. In fact, the executions were public affairs and people gathered outside the prison to watch the poor fellow(s) die. Rather gruesome afternoon outing, if you ask me, but I guess there were some back then who found watching an execution a form of entertainment. The newspapers of the day seldom used the term ‘buggery’ in articles about trials and convictions. It was commonly referred to as an ‘unnatural crime’ – just further drives home how they thought of homosexuality.

Therefore when it comes to writing a m/m Regency-set romance, the whole ‘could get hanged if word got out’ thing is something that authors can’t ignore. It’s a constant opposing force acting on the romance. Add to that Society’s expectations that men of good families marry well (not necessarily for love, but to form alliances with other families, increase a family’s wealth or land holdings, etc) and the preoccupation for maintaining a spotless reputation, and it makes crafting a HEA for a gay couple very difficult. If a man held a title or was an heir to a title, then it was expected he marry and produce the required heir and a spare. Duty to one’s family was very important, and ingrained in men at a very young age.

So, given all that, is it possible to have a HEA in a Regency gay romance? Of course. But it is a challenge, and it most certainly had to have been a challenge for gay men in the time period. The constant need for discretion, to keep their love for one another behind closed doors, the fear of being discovered…it must have been a horrible truth to have to live with, and I can just imagine that it tried many a relationship.

Are you wondering yet how a gay couple could realistically have a HEA? I hope so, as I’m going to give you some examples from my own work, and from another author’s work. In Object of His Desire, Arsen’s a titled lord (the Marquis of Somerville) yet he has no desire to marry. Realistically, while most lords married, not every titled lord married. In Arsen’s case, he didn’t wish to marry, and was willing to let the title go to one of his brothers’ sons. Conveniently, he had four brothers, one of which already had an heir. So, the title would stay within the immediate family. As for the social pressures, Arsen had had enough of London and wished to remain at his remote Durham estate (in northern England). Henry, the other hero, was the 3rd son of a country gentleman. Since his family wasn’t titled, he didn’t have the huge pressure to produce an heir in the event his elder brothers died without issue (i.e. didn’t have any kids or only had daughters). The book ends with Henry agreeing to remain at Arsen’s country estate, where they would have greater freedom than in London, but would still need to be careful. Arsen had servants, and while they were loyal, one can never predict what employees will do (disgruntled employees and all that). So no heavy make-out sessions for Henry and Arsen at the breakfast table, but at least I tried to craft it so that the constant pressing threat of discovery would be lessened.

Another example would be Bound by Deception. The two heroes, Vincent and Oliver, are both second sons to marquises, and as such are aware of the expectations placed on men of their station. In Vincent’s case, he was also very concerned about appearances. He strove to be the perfect gentleman, so his desires for Oliver were contrary to his own expectations of himself, and something he needed to come to terms with before the two men could have their HEA. Bound by Deception ends with Vincent coming to terms with his desires, and Bound to Him continues their relationship. It picks up six months after Bound by Deception, and in it I tried to give a glimpse for what it could have been like for a committed gay couple in Regency England. Of course, Vincent is still very concerned about appearances, and their relationship is further tested by the social expectations of the time period. Duty to one’s family, and all that. And, of course, you’ll have to get the book to see if the two men are able to maintain their HEA.

One last example for you, and it’s different than my own works because it deals with a widower. In Shawn Lane’s Another Chance, both heroes are titled lords. Aubrey, Viscount Rothton, has a title though it’s not much of one anymore. One night during their last year at Oxford, Aubrey and his friend Daniel had a scandalous encounter in a carriage. But before their relationship could go any further, Daniel’s father unexpectedly died and Daniel became the Earl of Greystone. He married and produced the required heir and a daughter. Years later, his wife passes away and he’s left a widower. He and Aubrey reconnect, yet even though Daniel has already satisfied the ‘heir’ requirement, there are still many obstacles in the path to their HEA. Since he has children who will someday move about Society, he needs to keep up appearances and continue to move about the ton. Plus, well, he has children who live with him, so he needs to keep his relationship with Aubrey hidden from them, as well. Both men are left knowing that their relationship will not be an easy one, and that they likely won’t be able to see each other often, but it’s a reality they accept in order to be together.

So you see, a HEA in a Regency-set romance is possible, but it is a challenge to craft one that is realistic to the time period. Personally, I find the HEA the hardest part of a gay historical romance, but also the most satisfying element of the story. If a relationship can survive in the Regency, then it must be very strong and meant to be. A true love match.

All right. So what do you think? Do you like to read Regency-set m/m romances? And if so, what attracts you to them?

And to give credit where credit is due, this entry was originally posted on Shawn Lane Writes Romance .

Thanks!!

-Ava

www.AvaMarch.com

 

Charlie meets the RNA, the RNA meets Charlie

Not for the first time, Alex Beecroft inspired me. She’s a member of the RNA (Romantic Novelists’ Association) and had gone to one of their meetings. And spoken to other authors. Real, live, face to face ones. In a mad moment I resolved to do the same, so I found out who was our local contact and fired off an e-mail asking a million questions. Well, three. Did they meet socially? Could newbies come along? Did I need to be a member to attend?

I had a delightfully welcoming reply – come along to our lunch meeting, no membership required, there’s a speaker, there’s a raffle! So, come the big day, I put on what Tamara Allen calls my ‘runs her own rock band’ outfit, ignore my 16 year old asking if Romantic Novelists’ meeting was a euphemism for ‘orgy’ and set off, with two concerns. Would I, even at 51, be the youngest in the room? And what would happen when I admitted I wrote gay romance?

I was made very welcome, everyone asking the same questions – do you write romance, are you are you published and are you from Havant. I never got to the bottom of the last one. Someone had come from Havant, I guess – in fact there were people from Shoreham and Swanage, all coming to Southampton to eat, drink and chat. And there were three men among the eighteen or so present.

Over lunch, I chatted to three other authors and the inevitable question arose – which romantic genre? Historical. Romantic suspense. And – I swallowed hard – gay. I waited to have my raffle ticket taken back and be sent from the room. Instead, they tried to put me at ease. “They’re all stories.” “I have a gay character in one of my books.” “Sarah Waters writes the genre.” It then became apparent that the lovely young Scottish bloke on my table was gay and the conversation turned to ‘who writes what’. He felt strongly that just because he was gay, it didn’t mean he had to write ‘gay’ stories and he didn’t get at me because I’m not gay and I did. I could have kissed him – I just hope he didn’t think I’d gravitated towards him because of some ping of the gaydar. (I didn’t. Charlie always just ends up near the youngest bloke in the room.)

The speaker was interesting, especially for me as she was writing a series of books. Publsihed by Orion, had the book of the month at Asda recently, but she said so many things we could identify with. “See this girl on the cover?” She looks nothing like my heroine.” Cue nods of understanding all around the room.

Will I go back for the next meeting in July? Yes. Will I join the RNA? I might. It won’t do much in terms of selling more books, but it wouldn’t hurt to bolster the group of m/m writers in their ranks. It takes authors from outside the UK, too. RNA Would I recommend going to a meeting if you had one nearby? Yes. Meeting other people with similar interests is always useful; you build up your knowledge, you make good contacts (I wouldn’t be published, wouldn’t have even wanted to be published, if I hadn’t ‘met’ lee Rowan.) I believe it’s also part of us saying “gay romance is as legitimnate a form of romance as any other and should be treated the same as comparable m/f stories”.

Maybe I was lucky. Maybe the reaction will be different next time if I sit with a different group of people (maybe they won’t e-mail me to confirm the venue!) But I showed my face and took another step on the coming out road. And no, dearest daughter, there wasn’t an orgy.

 

Historical Figures Imperative?

There’s a post over at Reading the Past which discusses the presence or absence of actual historical characters and events in historical fiction and whether the absence of them in books defines historical fiction or not.

I’m rather of the opinion that—going by the HNS definition—that it doesn’t make any difference whether there are any actual historical figures or notable events in the book or not.  In fact—for every single historical book to have real life historical figures in it would actually be ludicrous, for it would mean if you were writing about ordinary people living their ordinary lives—say slaving away in the cane fields of America or grubbing a living in the sordid streets of the Potteries—to suddenly introduce a real historical person would be a huge jolt.  I mean, look at even everyday lives today, how many people can say that they’ve met someone of note? (And I don’t mean a Big Brother Sleb, but someone that history will remember, such as Nelson Mandela or Mother Theresa?

Granted there is a real life person in Transgressions, the clever and charismatic Matthew Hopkins of Witchfinder fame. (Ignore the Vincent Price version puhleeze, that’s soft porn, just about) But that wasn’t exactly a conscious decision to include him, Jonathan just happened to be in the right place at the right time. And as for historical events, it would have been a little difficult to have two young men in 1642 NOT aware of the impending war. That being said, there is a true story which involves a farmer being asked if his land can be used for one of the battles and he said “Who’s fighting who, then?” (Communication not being a key aspect of the 17th century, and obviously not everyone knew about the war!)

But I don’t think it’s necessary at all to base your historical around real life events, or real life characters, and in fact its the stories that aren’t that I find most interesting.  If anyone has read “The Boy I Love” by Marion Husband you’ll see that it’s just a story about people, living their lives. In the same gentle manner that many of A J Cronin’s books are written, or Cookson’s.

To expect every book to be set around a historical event is also ludicrous. People always pick the same events too.  I’d like someone to make a study of books written about the Titanic and add up how many people to date have sailed on the ill-fated ship.  I would bet that her complement of passengers has increased by at least three-fold. I’m surprised she managed to get out of the harbour without sinking!

That being said – It always surprises me, with the enormous wealth of GLBT characters in history, that there aren’t more books about real characters.

So what do you think? Should historical novels all include famous people? Famous events? Or do you think that the little stories are just as important as the big ones?

 

Virgin Historical–A Guest Post by Chris Smith

Hello All,

Like a gazelle in a field of ravening cheetahs, I am sticking my head above the wall as that rarest of rare things on the Macaronis, an unpublished author. Do not worry, Alex Beecroft has given permission for the tasty morsel to wander into your playing field.

See, I am about 5 days away from finishing my first draft of my first ever Historical Novel. Well, my first ever novel. And not being an historian, nor especially well versed in history, I thought it could be interesting for people to see how someone like me goes about writing a first draft, and how they envision the writing process.

The story I’m writing, with a working title of De Ruina Mundi (I was being clever and allegorical. Next time it will be called “Book about XXXXX” Much less hassle.) is set in late 15th Century Florence, and is a commentary about church vs. secularism, and how the two were in direct opposition at the time, much as they are today (up to and including problem teens lurking on corners! I’m not joking!). It is the story of a sculptor, a novice monk, and a young aristocrat and features Savonarola and Cosimo de Medici as what I call ‘mid level characters’

Cosimo de Medici

Girolamo Savonarola

Now, when I started writing this, I had just got canned from the “I Do!” anthology for trying to tell a long story in less than 10,000 words.

Now, when I first started writing this, I had just got canned from the “I Do!” anthology for trying to tell a long story in less than 10,000 words.

Frankly, looking at it now, it was an unmitigated disaster., and would not have fit the anthology at all. So, I started De Ruina Mundi (DRM) pretty much from square one. I had three things on my side though, I’ve studied architectural history, I’m a highly theologically educated Roman Catholic, and I can read Italian.

Now, right at the beginning of DRM, I had to make a choice about how I was going to write it. I know that this has been brought up on Speak Its Name, actually in reference to DRM itself, so let me explain my

reasoning. As I read Italian, it means that I can read 15th Century Italian very easily, and not much has changed since then. Furthermore, Italian is written and spoken with a certain cadence and inflection that I can easily mimic in English. The thought of writing it in what I call “old-speake” seemed unnecessarily complex, and extremely anachronistic. Therefore, I decided to write it using Italian expressions and cadence, but in modern English.

So okay, now, I know that I want to write something about sculpture and art, and humanism versus the church, because I’ve always been very interested in the politics of art and architecture. But how best to showcase this? Well, how about an apprentice sculptor named Giuseppe Martedi (Johnny Tuesday! Hee!) and his friend Tomasino Rossi. They have grown up together, been friends since childhood, but now their
varying vocations are tearing them apart. They’ve always had a bit of a thing for the other, though Giuseppe is most definitely bisexual, while Tomasino pretty much only likes men. This book was supposed to be their story, a nice, 60k-ish novella about coming of age under two such defined institutions. It is not.

See, I had attempted to write the “I Do!” story with an outline, and got bored, so I figured I’d not try an outline for this one. And suddenly we had a the master-sculptor called Battista, his patron, Signor Agostino (vassal of the Medici), and his son Marco, and Signor Agostino’s brother, Fra. Benedetto, the novice master, and one of the few monks who were kept on at San Marco when Savonarola came to clear it up. And like Fleury in Standish by Erastes, the bloody buggers refused to go away! Okay, so reassess. Tie in Marco and Battista together, put some tension in between Benedetto, Signor Agostino, and Marco. Have Marco have a few horrible occurrences in his past. Suddenly, I’m 20k in, and completely confused as to where this was going.

I better interject here, that I write in a very amusing fashion for those reading along on etherpad. I do not stop writing to research. At all. So my text goes along the lines of…

“Marco and Tomasino stood at the end of the (road??? – what precisely was a road like! ) waiting for the (XXXX transport device). (Insert description of road here.) Marco turned to Tomasino and said (Foreshadow this!)… “

Which means that I kind of have a really really rough draft as I’m writing. (Note – that is a made-up example – there tend to be fewer comments per sentence). I figure that it should all be okay when I’m editing, but if you guys like this post, I’ll come back and tell you about how that all went.

Okay, sit back and reassess again. Luckily for me, my characters come with built in flaws – as a monk, Tomasino is the epitome of male Renaissance beauty. Which today would be called plump, rounded, fat.

Giuseppe is a little shit that is really up his own arse, and teases Tomasino about this continually. Ah, defensive men are amusing. And Marco is very impulsive, and very very “I look after me and mine. You are either for me or against me.” So, how to exploit those flaws?

Let’s ramp up the conflict, and introduce a nice Jesuit priest because the Dominicans were essentially founded to control the Jesuits. And boy do they hate each other. Move on from there…

At about 50k, I had a random panic. I thought I knew where the book was going to end, but how to get there and not blather on and on. (Rather like this post). I wrote an outline. It was a good outline.

Three days later I get smacked upside the head with a new ending.

Cue panic. Cue irritation. Cue new outline. Great. Ending sorted. HAH! No way. Seven chapters in, one of the characters refuses to behave himself (and it took Vashtan to remind me why). Cue soul searching. New ending appears. New ending is trite. More soul searching. New way to do that ending. Am I taking the easy way out? Am I playing to stereotype? Is the story consistent?

And so it goes. Endings have come and endings have gone. I am now about 27k away from the final word (taking a long weekend, so I can finish it off) and I am still a bit unsure of exactly how it is going to end. I have actually lost the time-line, and so my first edit is going to be retimelining the bloody thing.

There is much less sex in it than I originally thought there would be, and a lot less romance. Apparently my people never eat. Though they frequently have baths. This has ended up being a story of political intrigue, of people living and dying in one of the most volatile periods in European Catholic history. And I hope an entertaining read.

San Marco, Florence

I know that I am going to have one hell of a job on my hands editing this. But it has been the most amazing four months of my life. I never thought I could do it. I have been supported by some fantastic people,new friends and old. It has been a fantastic journey, and now the finish line is in sight.

So if you’re thinking of thinking of writing something. Go ahead. Take the plunge. It is worth it.

So thank you Alex, and Erastes for letting me post this here. Will keep you updated.

 

Bloody Good Fun

As a writer of gay historical mysteries, it’s important to me to make sure that my research is correct, not only in terms of places and clothing and people, but in terms of the murder scene itself.  I long ago realised that forensics textbooks (of which I own several, and often have to be forcibly restrained from buying more) are not enough in my case, and so I set about doing…

…my own forensics experiments.

Now, lest you think I am closeted away in my garage, Dexter-like, beating up skulls and watching the blood spatter – well, I am.   And I have the photo evidence to prove it.

The first experiment I ever did concerned with a young woman in a temper who, for reasons best known to herself, beat in a man’s head with a common building brick.   The various forensics texts I consulted gave a good account of how such an injury might look and how much it would probably bleed, but that wasn’t enough for me.  I’ve always been a hands-on sort of person.  I began to wonder if it were possible to replicate the circumstances of blunt-force trauma – without actually killing anyone – and if so, could I design an experiment that would allow for measurable results?

Let me preface this by saying I am not associated with any branch of law enforcement whatsoever.  I am not a detective; I am not a police officer; I am not a blood spatter analyst.  I have nothing to do with criminalistics – I am merely curious.

I knew that the approximate thickness of a human skull was 6.9 to 7.1 mm, depending on age and sex, or roughly a quarter of an inch.  I needed something that was as thick as human bone, nearly as hard, but which would shatter in the same fashion as a human skull if struck.  I decided on plaster of Paris, the same  stuff that casts are made out of.  The construction needed to be hollow, to allow for the insertion of an appropriate liquid medium (standing in for blood); I decided therefore to construct ersatz skulls, using the plaster and common, everyday balloons, easily obtained at any corner shop.  I wrapped the wet plaster strips around the inflated balloon, waited for it to dry (this took about three days, as I was continually building up layers to reach the appropriate thickness) and then I broke the balloon and pulled the rubber shards out through my fake skull’s foramen magnum (the large hole in the human occipital bone, through which the top of the spinal column passes.)

My “skull” looked like this:

Mr. Spatter

As far as skulls went, he bore no real resemblance to anyone I had ever seen, but he would, as it turned out, perform his appointed task to the best of his ability, i.e., act as a container for what I wanted to put in him (an appropriate blood analogue) and disperse it in a realistic fashion as a result of premeditated blunt-force trauma.

Choosing an appropriate blood analogue came down to the fulfillment of two principles: fluidity and viscosity.  I needed something that would remain liquid (and neither dry up nor coagulate) that also had the approximate viscosity of human blood.   If I wanted to be really accurate, I could have clothed Mr. Spatter with some approximation of skin and hair, but at the time it seemed akin to carrying coals to Newcastle.

(Fake Gore ahead)

 

Making History Sexy, by Josh Lanyon

Making History Sexy

I don’t do a lot of historical romance. Not that I don’t love history — history is one of my passions, as a matter of fact — but I find that my single historical romance — Snowball in Hell — doesn’t sell as well as my other titles. It’s not, as my natural insecurity would lead me to believe, unique to me. I hear from a number of romance publishers that historical can be a hard sell — so many variables, you see. Readers tend to have preferences for time periods, so while a reader may adore Age of Sail, she may not be so hot on the Jazz Age. Regencies were huge for a long time, but the market was flooded and for a while there you could sell Stone Age more easily than Regency (although Regency is once again experiencing a resurgence). Like real history, these things go in cycles.

Anyway, I’ve always been partial to the rich dramatic possibilities of World War I. The tragedy and horror, the romance and chivalry — forty million casualties — and the dawn of a new age. In particular I’ve been fascinated by the aerial battles and the aces — the canvas falcons. There’s a lot of potential there for powerful storytelling. So I finally decided to write a novella about a WWI ace. It’s called Out of the Blue, and it’s coming from Liquid Silver sometime in August, from what I hear. It’s a nice little crime story…with wings. But the thing is, I have to make a living at this, so I had to find a way to take this historical tale and make it sexy and modern and appealing to contemporary readers, of which, I hope, there will be many.

Easier said than done, perhaps. Part of the difficulty is the early Twentieth Century itself. Westerns, Medievals…they’re far enough back that they almost have a fantasy quality to them. And stories from the 1930s and 40s…well, who hasn’t seen The Maltese Falcon or at least Chinatown? These stories have a sort of vintage cachet to them. But the early 1900s…it’s tricky. It’s modern enough to be a little less romantic than, say, the Victorian period, but it’s so…quaint.

There’s a danger of parody as with this letter from British ace, Albert Ball, to the folks at home.

Cheerio, dears…Really, I am having too much luck for a boy. I will start straight away, and tell you all. On August 22 I went up. Met twelve Huns….

A little of that goes a long way. Obviously, to keep it real, you do want to sprinkle in a few “old beans” and “jolly goods,” but it’s got to be done sparingly or the modern reader begins to feel too detached, like she’s watching characters in a play. In good fiction, we’re in the moment with the characters, we’re living each scene with them — flinching at the bullets singing past, laughing at the jokes, blinking back the tears at the death of a beloved friend.
Part of how we achieve the goal of keeping the reader in the moment with us — even if the moment is April 1916 — is by staying focused on the humanity of our characters. Humans haven’t changed as much as you might think (and hope) since the dawn of time. Okay, our hygiene is better. Our hair is definitely better. But though our definitions may change, but we still need to feel successful, to love and be loved. We still experience the same emotions: joy, sorrow, jealousy, triumph, fear…

Fear is a good one for m/m romance because western society’s views on homosexuality have altered significantly throughout history — from generation to generation. Passionate but platonic male friendship was the order of the day during WWI. Homosexuality carried a potential death penalty. So we can play on that paranoia, we can use that fear effectively, and the modern reader can identify with that — can certainly identify with the need for love and companionship, and from there can empathize with the strain of having to disguise your true nature, the difficulty of hiding your needs…indefinitely…from those closest to you.

In order to write comfortably about the past, you need to know your stuff. That means doing your homework. But when the time comes to share that knowledge with the reader — to build the stage upon which your characters will play — it’s got to feel real and casual. Historical romance should never be clinical or textbookish. And part of how we keep it real and avoid reading like a sexy syllabus is by putting in the sensual details. No, I’ve never taken a bi-plane for a spin, but I do know how the icy wind feels blowing in my face, what petrol smells like, what a sunrise looks like, or how ale tastes.

Details matter — and never more than in historical fiction. Do not put your Knights Templar riding into battle in 1315 or have Apaches attacking in Ohio. Mistakes are not sexy.
And the last and most obvious way of making your historical sexy is…er…putting in a lot of sex. As much as makes sense. Yes, I know it sounds crass, but when it comes to historical romance, take a tip from those old bodice rippers of the 1970s. Sex sells. Sex is one of those universals, and there seems to be a certain amount of kink inherent in seeing people from the past doin eet. Maybe it’s the costumes. Maybe it’s the suspicion we all have that our parents couldn’t really have done that. Whatever the charm, romance readers — m/m romance readers in particular — like sex. If there’s one thing history teaches us, it’s that some things never change.

 

Writing about gay soldiers from a historical perspective.

17th Century

By Mark R. Probst

My current writing project is a piece about a gay soldier in a famous historical battle. It is a unique challenge to write a fictional story with fictional characters and have them interact with real characters and true events in a historically significant battle, especially one as well-known as the one I have chosen. I have to envy fantasy writers as they have the liberty to completely invent the battles to serve their characters. However in my case I must delicately weave the threads of my fictional story into the tapestry of history while carefully avoiding collisions that would alter true history.

My first step was to thoroughly research this particular battle to see where my story would best fit in. I read a book written by an authority and I also dug up all the information I could find on the internet (isn’t Wikipedia great?)

18th Century

In my case it was necessary to choose a specific real-life troop to which my soldiers would belong, and map out the logistics of the story based on all the known facts about this troop. If a battle is large and complex, a writer might get away with inventing an entire troop. I didn’t have this luxury as the specifics of this battle are rather well documented. Research can be either fun or a drudge. For me, reading non-fiction materials comes under the drudge category, while watching all the movies about this battle is definitely on the fun side. As a film buff, I like to pattern my writing style after classic movies. This particular battle was immortalized on film a number of times, and it is quite interesting to compare all the different interpretations. Though I do have to be careful, because some of the movies I encountered in this instance took a ridiculous amount of artistic license to reinvent history!

19th Century

I found that with my one other published work, I had the most success by marketing it as a traditional romance since it did fit within those guidelines.  Now, writing about war, I’m making a departure from that genre.  Because I am striving for authenticity, it occurs to me that “happily ever after” rarely exists in war.  Sure, being away from home and under extreme duress, soldiers often found comfort in the arms of lovers.  But once the conflict ended, they returned to their wives or families and left these temporary wartime romances behind.

 

One problem I see in a lot of gay historicals, is what Erastes has coined as OK homo – the tendency to make it a little too easy for gay people to live and be happy in a historical context.  While it is certainly pleasant to imagine a happy idyllic gay couple living in the 19^th Century, it’s just not realistic.  Don’t get me wrong; I have nothing against these feel-good gay historical romances, after all I wrote one myself!  It’s just that my goal with this new story is to create a believable environment in which a soldier knows he has romantic yearnings for a comrade, and also knows that to reveal these desires would be fatal.

The whole subject of gays in the military became a rather conspicuous news story 17 years ago when President Clinton made a campaign promise to lift the ban; and then again as our present administration announced its intention to abolish “don’t ask, don’t tell.” I don’t think it’s unreasonable to believe that by the time President Obama leaves office, gays and lesbians will be proudly and openly serving their country.

For research purposes this book is essential

So the fact that gay and lesbian military personnel have had to serve in secret throughout history makes for a rich landscape in which to cultivate stories. For inspiration, check out Randy Shilts’ wonderful book entitled “Conduct Unbecoming” that documents real-life gay and lesbian cases all the way back to the Revolutionary War. You will be astounded to know the very large number of dishonorable discharges that were processed every year for homosexuality as the U. S. military was actively entrapping and ferreting out gays and lesbians. Not to mention the cases of soldiers who actually spent years in military prisons after being court-martialed for sodomy. What is absolutely inconceivable to me is that in 1975 decorated Viet Nam war hero Leonard Matlovich was dishonorably discharged from the Air Force after publicly coming out. He sued the Air Force for reinstatement. While he was never reinstated, he did get his discharge changed from dishonorable to honorable. The Air Force did this mainly to rescue their eroding PR, but policy did not change and thousands of men and women continued to be ferreted out.

In closing I’d like to bring your attention to this submissions call. We are looking for good stories that demonstrate what life must have been like for gay and/or lesbian military personnel in a historical setting. Whether it’s 18th Century English Naval officers, 19th Century cavalry soldiers, the men storming the beaches of Normandy on D-day, or the draftees of the Viet Nam War, homosexuals were present and participated in these events and its time they got their due.

LGBT Military History Submissions Call

And finally please allow me to mention a few of the books that have been written with major gay characters in military settings: The upcoming Transgressions by Erastes (English Civil War) and False Colors by Alex Beecroft (One of those English Naval Wars), A Different Sin by Rochelle Hollander Schwab (American Civil War), Ransom and all its sequels by Lee Rowan, Captain’s Surrender by Alex Beecroft, and last but certainly not least The Charioteer by Mary Renault.

 

Really do wish you were here…

I have trouble deciding whether I side with LP Hartley “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there,” or the alternative version (whose author I can’t recall, but might be Douglas Adams) “The past really is a foreign country; they do things exactly the same there.” When I was last on Jersey, I picked up a great little book, Wish you were here by John le Dain. I’d recommend anyone to get a copy of this or something similar. It’s full of picture postcards over the last century; reading through it, and them, the pictures make me tend towards the Hartley view, but the messages on the back? Douglas might just have got it right.

Postcards, especially used and franked ones, can be dated to within a short space of time, so give the writer of historical fiction a nice source of what the world looked like. Yes, the views chosen tend to the picturesque, but they’re real, not a painted ideal landscape. I found it fascinating how little had altered, despite the bashing Jersey got in the war. There’s a picture of St Brelade’s Bay in 1909 – both the rocks and the little jetty look just as they were when I was collecting crabs and shrimps there with my daughter two years back. Details have altered, but so many places are instantly recognisable from one hundred years ago. Writing in the first half of the twentieth century or very late nineteenth? This sort of book would be a magnificent way of picturing your setting accurately.

Many postcards have pictures of folk going about their daily business – people shopping, horse drawn cabs waiting to pick up fares. These aren’t posed portraits, they’re commonplace men and women dressed in the everyday style and so possibly more likely to reflect ordinary life than a painting. There’s a crowded beach, for example, in what seems Edwardian times from the fashions. Little girls and boys are bathing, while their mothers stand not more than a few feet from the water’s edge, fully dressed – long skirts, hats, the works. In another picture, a family descend a dodgy looking ladder to a beach. We have the same, three-piece suited, ‘hats and boots respectability’ about the clothes, but the faces and poses of the two teenage lads who’ve scooted on ahead appear wonderfully modern.

The gems are in the messages, though – not words carefully crafted for public consumption but chatty, personal communication. People, of course, have changed very little inside – they have the same needs and desires they had when Ug and Og were living in a cave, watching the hairy rhinoceroses in lieu of TV. So we have this saucy miss from 1904: “Weather lovely – plenty of ‘Francais’ but do not want any of them. Nearly all fellows in the house.” I bet she was having a great time. So was the guy who wrote (undated) that there were “Some fine Janes here”.

Perhaps best of all, from 1958: “Having a very nice time here with bags of talent but most of it’s sixteen or sixty…Having a good old session every night & what with that and swimming every day I feel just about clapped out.” Nothing changes, eh? Except prices, of course. 1935: “Cigarettes 20 for 4d*, beer 4d pint, in fact we just LIVE.”

* that’s 2p, perhaps 3 cents.

I like the humour: 1934: “…and are at present sat in the rocks almost like an armchair only without the cushions.” And the snippets which put wartime hardship into perspective: 1946 “Milk is not rationed & wherever you go you see people buying glasses of milk just as you do ice cream. In the hotel at lunch times it is strange to see grown up people all ordering glasses of mil with their lunch.” Bet if you put that in a story no-one would believe you.

Something which struck me was the constant references to the weather – quite natural on a holiday postcard – but interesting when you consider weather patterns. We’ve had some rainy summers recently, so the doom and gloom merchants have come out in force to say “It was never like this when we were young – summers were summers then” or to link the allegedly unseasonable weather to global warming. Oh yeah?

August 1911 – “We were caught in a fearful thunderstorm…this morning it is very showery.
1922 – no month – “I shouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t stop raining all the holiday.”
August 1934 – “rain every day so far”.
July 1938 – “…very cold and wet…We can’t even get English newspapers while the weather is so bad.”
August 1953 – “Had a fairly rough crossing and the sun seems to have deserted us.”

I hasten to add that there were plenty of cards saying how hot and sunny it was, but you get the point. People have short memories and look at the past through rose tinted glasses; if you want to really know what went on, go to the contemporary sources.

 

Book release – Lessons in Desire by Charlie Cochrane

“There is an island in the sun…”

Well, it’s not quite the Indies – West or East – but Jersey certainly is a special place. We’ve holidayed there regularly (going again this year) and I’ve never seen an island which could pack so much variety into so few square miles; beaches, castles, restaurants, shops, history ancient and modern. When I started working on what was to become the Cambridge Fellows Mystery series, I was determined that Drs Stewart and Coppersmith would get to visit the island, and they’re doing just that in the second book, Lessons in Desire, available now in e-book from Linden Bay Romance.

Excerpt:
Jonty sat down on a rock to get on with removing his shoes and socks.

“What are you doing?”

“Going paddling, Orlando.” The holiday air had affected them both, so using Christian names now seemed acceptable, even outside their suite. Stewart suddenly looked up at the awkward figure which towered over him. “Oh, Orlando. You’d never been in The Bishop’s Cope, you’d never been punting, please, please don’t tell me that you have never paddled.”

“I have actually paddled on a number of occasions, when I was taken to see my grandmother at Margate.” Orlando attempted to look a man at once dignified and completely au fait with the delights of the seaside.

Jonty assumed a particularly sly look. “When exactly was the last time you indulged in this wild activity?”

Coppersmith mumbled, “When I was seven.”

Jonty giggled. “Then you had better ruddy well get your socks off and your trouser bottoms rolled up, because you are coming with me.”

Orlando felt distinctly miffed. He contemplated refusing to do any such thing, but decided to obey orders, stuffing his socks into the toes of his shoes, then tying the laces together in imitation of Stewart. The reason for this strange procedure became obvious when Jonty slung his shoes around his neck, leaving his hands free to continue to pick up stones for skimming or shells for stuffing in his pockets.

As he watched Jonty turning over rocks to search for tiny crustaceans which he then let run over his palms, it struck Orlando more than ever that at heart his friend was just an overgrown boy. An enormous crab was rooted out, a good three inches across the carapace, which Stewart expertly picked up to wave at Coppersmith. “What a whopper, Orlando! Look!” He passed the creature over, grinning as his friend inevitably grabbed it the wrong way, earning a sharp nip on his fingers.

Coppersmith flung the offending animal away, shaking his sore hand and cursing like a sailor.

“Orlando, such language!” Jonty hooted with laughter. “Look, take him across the back, so all your fingers are out of his reach.” He demonstrated the technique, then made his friend do the same.

Gingerly Orlando took up the vicious creature, breaking into a smile of delight when the method worked. “He’s a beauty, Jonty. Not big enough for tea, though.” Laughing, he placed the crab down among the rocks, returning to follow his friend. The tide was ebbing, revealing rock pools full of shrimps which Stewart caught in his hand, then let spring out of his grasp with a giggle. Coppersmith soon learned that game too, proving much more adept at catching the little invertebrates and the darting fishes than his friend. It was like being a child again, except that there hadn’t been that much room for play in his childhood, so there was time to be caught up. Yet again, he could experience a freedom with Stewart that he’d never known before they met. He watched his friend pick up a huge ormer shell, holding it to the light so that they could both admire the mother of pearl glittering in the sunlight.

“Beautiful. Eh, Orlando?”

“Indeed.” Although Coppersmith didn’t mean the shell so much as the man holding it.

So what are they doing frivolling in such an uncharacteristic way? Well, Orlando’s being dragged kicking and screaming by a very determined Jonty, who wants a break and who has negotiated down from the Rivera or Petra to St Aubin’s Bay. Orlando, naturally, dreads leaving the security of the college and going somewhere he’ll have to break out of his routine and talk to people – possibly women! And they’ll run the risk of people looking at them and knowing what’s going on back in their room. Or not going on, if Orlando has anything to do with it

When a brutal murder occurs at the hotel where they’re staying, the two young men are once more drawn into the investigation. The race to catch the killer gets complicated by the victim’s son, Ainslie, a man who seems to find Coppersmith too attractive to resist making a pass.

Excerpt: “Do love you, you know. Don’t say it enough.”

“You don’t need to say it, not in words.” Orlando briefly caressed Stewart’s fingers. “It’ll be the last dance soon. I’ll take Mrs. Sheringham if she’s up for it, and you ask Mrs. Forbes, that’ll wipe the smiles off the faces of their husbands. And their daughters. Then we’ll be allowed to make our way up to bed.”

“A handsome plan. So to bed, where actions may be given free rein to express what words can scarce dare to hint at.”

“That’s lovely. Is it Shakespeare?”

“No, it’s Stewart, inspired by a theme of Coppersmith. I hear a waltz; duty first.” Jonty made an elaborate salute.

“I hope you don’t intend to do your duty by the young ladies?”

“You know I only ever do my duty by you. If you want, I’m ready to do it tonight.”

Coppersmith was convinced that his heart would have leapt out of his chest had he not his best boiled shirt on to contain it. “Then mark your card for the last dance with me, Jonty. To be performed in our suite.”

The sound of the orchestra still rang in their ears as they opened the door to their rooms. Orlando closed it carefully behind him, then immediately took Stewart in his arms. “I promised you the last dance. We’ll have it here and now.” They began to slowly waltz across the room, Coppersmith leading them expertly between the little tables and the sofa.

“Why must I be the woman? I’m sure your mathematical noddle would be better at reversing the steps.”

“You can lead next time. If your home in Sussex is as spacious as you keep saying it is, there should be ample room for dancing.” Orlando drew his lover close, took in the aroma of his hair, newly washed that afternoon and still smelling of lavender. “If I were a woman, I wouldn’t let anyone else dance with you.”

“If you were a woman, I’d get my mama to tell you that I’d been injured in a certain part of my anatomy in a hunting accident, so couldn’t be interested.” Jonty buried his nose in the folds of his lover’s jacket.

“You are such an idiot at times.” Coppersmith kissed the top of Stewart’s head. “I sometimes wonder if I really do love you, or simply tolerate you in an attempt to keep you from causing chaos amongst the rest of the world.”

This book has given me the opportunity to take the lads out of Cambridge and so let some radiance into their tale. Elisa Rolle said: “And it’s exactly the feeling I had reading the book, light, in both its meanings”. (Full review here.) It’s also given me a chance to introduce Jonty’s family and explore a bit more of Orlando’s painful past.

Now, do you think I can claim the cost of this year’s holiday as work-related?

 

‘Out’ and in sport.

Tuesday 5th May 1998, BBC News: Justin Fashanu was found dead in a lock-up garage in east London on Saturday. The former Norwich City and Nottingham Forest footballer died as a result of hanging, a post-mortem examination has concluded.

Justin Fashanu was the first footballer to come out; at the time of his death he was coaching a team in the US and was facing a sexual assault charge.

Tuesday 13th January 2009 BBC News: Eleven people have been charged with indecent chanting at a football match after an inquiry into suspected abuse aimed at Sol Campbell. The abuse was both racist and homophobic.

That’s not to say that Justin Fashanu killed himself simply because he was gay, nor am I suggesting anything about Sol Campbell’s sexuality – that’s his affair – but I choose these stories to illustrate the prejudices which still run rife in the so called ‘beautiful game’. For examples of what any gay footballer would have to face, I can highly recommend the article here.

Surely that prejudice, the risk of mockery and abuse, is why so few sportsmen come out, especially when they’re still active within their field. Sportswomen seem more likely to do so; there are plenty of lesbians ‘out’ within the sporting community – Amelie Mauresmo, Clare Balding, Karrie Webb among many others. But ‘out’ sportsmen, those still competing at the highest level? You could count them on your fingers.

Interestingly enough, a number of them are within equestrianism, about the only sport where men and women compete on equal terms. I’m not for a moment implying that equestrian sport is in any way ‘effeminate’. It takes a huge amount of strength, guts and skill to manoeuvre a horse around a three day event cross country course; Blyth Tait does it to great effect, becoming Olympic eventing Champion in 1996. Then there’s Lee Pearson, CBE, who’s won nine paralympic gold medals in dressage, despite having very little use of his legs (he controls the horse through his backside – he says he’s got a great bottom). He’s certainly talented enough to compete in able bodied events. Carl Hester and Robert Dover are other noted ‘out’ riders.

Olympians feature heavily here: diver Matthew Mitcham went to the Beijing Olympics not only having revealed his sexuality, but having applied – successfully – for a grant to enable his boyfriend to go with him. Matthew became 10m platform gold medallist. But of the thousands of competitors who go to the games, only a dozen or so are known to be ‘out’, most of them women.

Rob Newton, Britain’s top hurdler, declared his sexuality and, interestingly, it seems to have had very little coverage. (I’m an avid – some would say rabid – sports fan, and I only found this fact out while researching this article.) That’s a feature about all these sportsmen I’m mentioning here – their being out is neither hidden nor generally discussed , and why should it be? Commentators don’t introduce William Fox-Pitt as ‘the straight rider’ so why should anyone describe Blyth Tait as ‘the gay one’?

I couldn’t finish without a mention of rugby and of course, Supernige – Nigel Owens – who’s not a player but a highly respected referee. And he brings the story full circle, having attempted suicide when younger, tormented by his sexuality and steroid addiction. The fact that he got through that difficult time is testament to his highly supportive family and the fact that he takes to the pitch and doesn’t get abused is testament to the great nature of rugby. He does get the odd shout of “Are you bent, ref?” (meaning biased), sometimes followed by “Sorry, Nige, didn’t mean it like that…”

In contrast to the attitudes within rugby, I still find it difficult to believe that, in my lifetime, any association footballer could come out as gay or have his boyfriend among the WAGs. I hope to be proved wrong.

 

Historical Fiction. Settings. Part One

 

I’ve been noticing recently that almost every historical to cross my path has a Regency or possibly Victorian setting. I’m sure there’s a good reason for this – those ages are more modern in their outlook, and are also very popular in costume dramas on the TV and the movies.

But there are other eras to choose from. Here’s a little list. In fact I grew exhausted by the end, so here is the start of a little list, and I’ll carry on with the Iron age in another post!

Stone Age

This is a long, long period of time, during which all sorts of exciting changes in human society occurred. Modern humans interacted with Neanderthals – there were two different kinds of human on the planet! Amazing. Agriculture was invented. America was discovered and colonised. Stonehenge was built.

How about a gay Clan of the Cave Bear? Lots of things to discover, invent or fight for the first time. Was there homophobia in the stone age? I suspect we really don’t know, so this might be a good place for a happy ever after. And men in leather, hunting mammoth for a living, can’t be a bad thing.

If you can’t live without a city, however, how about Çatalhöyük a stone age city in Turkey. It would make a change!

Wikipedia starter on the Stone Age

Bronze Age

In Britain, you have the mysterious Beaker people, who arrive and establish friendly relations with the indigenous stone age inhabitants. They ‘improve’ Stonehenge and build their own massive earth and stone circles. Classic stranger in a strange land territory; love across the divide of culture. This is also the age when textile production starts. Surely there’s a f/f story there somewhere?

In Mesopotamia you have the Akkadians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians and the Sumerians. But this is also the great age of ancient Egypt, which is a setting made for romance.

You’ve got Persians, Anatolians, the Canaanites, the Hittites. You’ve got the Minoans – bull dancers and minotaurs and carmine stained pillars in cool palaces on the Greek islands.

There’s the Seima-Turbino Phenomenon, where a mass migration of people from what is now Russia and China ends up leaving cultural and metallurgical traces in Finland. Surely there’s a story there!

There was an Indus Valley civilization in India, and Chinese civilization is going strong. There’s the fascinating Dong Son culture in Vietnam. There’s all sorts of stuff going on with the Tumulus people in central Europe, and in the Americas the Inca civilization developed bronze independently and simultaneously (or did they…? Might the knowledge have been brought over by a shipwrecked Cornishman in a Dover bronze age boat?)

Wikipedia starter on the Bronze Age

Iron Age

Now we’re really motoring!

This is a good age to be a Bantu-speaking native of East and South Africa, who discover iron and use it to drive out the stone-tool using hunter gatherer peoples they encounter on the Savannah. I’d like to read a story about that from either pov or both.

I have dibs on the Etruscans, my favourite not-quite-Romans, whose morals scandalized the ancient world:

A Greek historian’s account of the behaviour of Etruscan women.
Theopompus of Chios, 4th cent. BCE (Histories Book 43)

Sharing wives is an established Etruscan custom. Etruscan women take particular care of their bodies and exercise often, sometimes along with the men, and sometimes by themselves. It is not a disgrace for them to be seen naked. They do not share their couches with their husbands but with the other men who happen to be present, and they propose toasts to anyone they choose. They are expert drinkers and very attractive.

The Etruscans raise all the children that are born, without knowing who their fathers are. The children live the way their parents live, often attending drinking parties and having sexual relations with all the women. It is no disgrace for them to do anything in the open, or to be seen having it done to them, for they consider it a native custom. So far from thinking it disgraceful, they say when someone ask to see the master of the house, and he is making love, that he is doing so-and-so, calling the indecent action by its name.
When they are having sexual relations either with courtesans or within their family, they do as follows: after they have stopped drinking and are about to go to bed, while the lamps are still lit, servants bring in courtesans, or boys, or sometimes even their wives. And when they have enjoyed these they bring in boys, and make love to them. They sometimes make love and have intercourse while people are watching them, but most of the time they put screens woven of sticks around the beds, and throw cloths on top of them.
They are keen on making love to women, but they particularly enjoy boys and youths. The youths in Etruria are very good-looking, because they live in luxury and keep their bodies smooth. In fact all the barbarians in the West use pitch to pull out and shave off the hair on their bodies.

And who have a very fine line in tomb-decoration:

Thanks to http://www.mysteriousetruscans.com/theopompus/index.html

But I think they may deserve an entry of their own.

I’ve suddenly realized that this is a topic which is going to stretch on and on, so I’ll draw a line there and do part two another time!

 

An Opinion from an M/M Historical Romance Writer Riding the Short Bus

by Kiernan Kelly

A reader recently remarked to me that he found the thought of writing a historical piece of romantic fiction intimidating. “I don’t know enough. I’m not a historian, like you,” he said.

 

After I finished laughing hysterically, I had to set him straight.

 

When it comes to being an authority on anything besides tying my own shoelaces, I’m the first to admit to my sad lack of expertise. I am not a history buff; I cannot quote the dates and places of famous battles, nor can I pull details of Victorian Age fashion, or Renaissance architecture out of my ass. I cannot intelligently contribute to discussions of pre-Greece Middle Eastern culture — or post-Greece, for that matter. I do not offhand know the difference between a brigantine and schooner; or what Edwardian men wore under their trousers. 

 

In my opinion, it’s much easier to write contemporary romance. I already know what the locations look like — even if I’ve never been there personally, there’s a good chance I know someone who has, and there’s always Google Earth, travel documentaries, and the web. I know the protocol of dating, the etiquette of the dinner table. I know from personal experience how it feels to ride in a car, a train, a plane, and on a cruise ship. I know how hot dogs taste, have eaten truffles, and understand how a thick, frosty milkshake can give you a brain freeze. I know how to rent a room in a motel, and the differences one might find between a room at Motel 6 and the Hilton. I can place a character virtually anywhere on the planet, and describe him and his setting with some conviction.

 

Writing historical romance is much, much trickier. The details of the story, the setting, the props, and the landscape are as alien to me in my personal bubble of experience as the far side of the universe.

 

All of which raises the question: why is this person, who admits to being the human equivalent of a historical factoid void, posting to a historical fiction writers’ group blog?

 

The answer is simple. While I know precious little about history, I do write historical m/m romance, and enjoy it. Before anyone begins sharpening the guillotine or fashioning a hangman’s noose, let me explain — my statement isn’t as oxymoronic as it sounds. While my brain cells aren’t steeped in historical data, I do hold both a fondness for, and interest in our species’ past. I don’t profess to be a historian, neither professional nor amateur, but I do possess a healthy imagination, a computer, and a library card.

 

That said, all I can possibly contribute to this blog is to share what I told the reader who mistakenly pegged me as an expert — my view from the short bus, the remedial history class as it were, where I sit at the back of the room trying to pass the exam by shooting my cuffs.  

 

I believe it is entirely possible to write a piece of credible, believable historical fiction without holding a PhD in Ancient Civilizations or the high score in Jeopardy. While I won’t begin to pretend to be a historian, I can discuss how I, someone who doesn’t know the difference between a cutlass and a scimitar, can write a historical romance.

 

The trick — for me, at any rate — is research, and lots of it. It isn’t unusual for me to spend as much or possibly more time researching details as it does for me to write the story. Sometimes I begin collecting data months before I even take the time to rough out a plot.

 

I’ll take trips to a brick-and-mortar library where I’ll take copious notes in chicken scratch decipherable by me alone, later to be transcribed into a Word document, and I’ll surf the web until my fingers are worn down to nubs. I’m in the process of building my own library of reference books, fettered only by the limits of my sorely overtaxed credit cards.

 

Has any of this research made me a historian? No. Again, I must remind the reader that I am not an expert. What I am is an information pack rat.

 

I keep my notes along with everything I’ve found scouring online resources — whether in the end, I use them or not — in a computer file. I never delete these files. My reasoning is that if, in the future, I decide to write another story set in that period, the research is already done and at my fingertips.

 

I never make the mistake of assuming I know anything. Aside from the entire ass/you/me thing, assuming I know something as fact is a surefire way to screw up the details, and believe you me, someone, somewhere will notice and call me on it. I once got an angry two-page letter from a reader berating me because I didn’t correctly describe the splatter pattern of a shotgun blast.

 

Two entire pages. Seriously.

 

The only other tip I can offer is never to take anything you read at face value. Wikipedia, perhaps the most oft-used — while equally oft-lamented — database on the Internet is a good stepping-off point for research, but an unreliable one. I’ll take what I’ve learned there and find other, credible sources to support the information. I’ll double-check my facts, then triple-check them to be certain. In this stage of the game, I feel free to be as obsessive as I’d like — in this instance, anal retentiveness can only stand me in good stead when I finally put pen to paper. 

 

I question everything as I’m writing. For example, if writing a dinner scene set in ancient Greece during the Bronze Age, I’ll ask myself whether my characters would know what a fork is, let alone how to use one (probably not, considering the fork didn’t make an appearance in Greece until roughly 400 AD, and yes, I had to look it up). What type of furniture did they use? What type of bowls and serving platters? What did they eat? What kind of clothing did they wear, and of which type of fabric? I’ll make a list of these questions and more, then hit the books to find the answers.

 

If I’m writing a pirate story set on one of the aforementioned brigantines during the early 18^th century, I’ll research how the ships were built, find diagrams, and learn which parts served what functions. I’ll learn how many sails there should be, how they were rigged, and the difference between the forecastle and the poop deck.

 

Speaking of poop, I’ll even consider how my pirate hero might manage the most routine of everyday chores and ablutions — how was food cooked aboard a wooden ship, and how did they manage their waste? Even if I don’t use all the information collected, I feel the knowledge of the most intimate details of my character’s life will only add believability as I write the story.

 

I’ve become comfortable saying, “I don’t know,” and “I need help.” When all else fails, I’ll ask an expert. The web is stuffed full of contact information for historians. I’ll send an email explaining who I am and my mission, along with my question to an appropriate source, and politely ask for an opinion. At worst, I’m ignored, and at best, get an educated response, or at least, a nudge in the right direction for further research.

 

I’ll also ask other authors for their favorite informational sources. Most, like the Macaronis, are more than willing to share their special sources, those books and websites they rely on when fishing for facts.

 

I think another invaluable tool for a historical writer — or any writer for that matter — is a strong sense of empathy. It isn’t enough to simply find the facts, to envision a ship or a castle, to stare at illustrations of doublets and frock coats, or paintings of wattle-and-daub huts, or cobblestone streets lined with gas lamps. I think a writer needs to be able to feel what it’s like to be their character in that setting, wearing those clothes, living in that civilization, in that time period.

 

As children, we found this an easy task. We became the pirates, the knights, the princes on our white steeds. We lived and breathed inside their skins, with little or no effort on our parts. As we grew older, we were taught to put aside childish nonsense, to act our ages. What a shame. The ability to pretend so easily, so completely, would do us in good stead now.

 

A writer needs to know how to recapture that long-lost freedom to believe we are the character, to look at our modern kitchens and see an open hearth and rough-hewn table, to walk the aisle of a supermarket and see an open-air market in Babylonia. That skill and the facts uncovered during research will combine on paper to form a believable, historically accurate story. 

 

Will I ever be a historian? Probably not. I am a jack-of-all-trades and master of none, stuck forever in the back row of the remedial history class, admiring those among my peers who’ve aced the honors course.

 

Can I write a believable piece of historical romance? Sure. I can, and I have.

 

So can you.

 

 

Kiernan Kelly is the author of In Bear Country, and In Bear Country II: The Barbary Coast.  

 

 

 

Ten Books for a Writer’s Island

 

What books would you want beside you if you had a lovely, private cottage with your computer on a solar-recharger, a story to write, and lots of time … but no library available?   I know which ones I’d want.

I’m not going to list the bare-bones: an Unabridged Dictionary, Bartlett’s Quotations, The Elements of Style, a World Atlas, or Roget’s Thesaurus – almost anyone who’s serious about writing has probably got favorites in that category, and those are essential tools for anybody writing anything, from contemporary horror to the wildest fantasy.

The books I’ll be talking about here are the ones closest to hand on my reference shelf, and they’re the ones I’ve turned to most often in writing m/m historical. They’re the books I would want with me if I had a month to spend on a quiet island with nothing to do but write… what a lovely notion!

1. A Sea of Words (King, Hattendorf, & Estes, Henry Holt, 1995.)

A Sea of Words was written as a companion book to Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series, and it did the job beautifully. It’s also a boon companion to writing Age of Sail – you will find not only explanations of the sea-dog terminology Mr O’Brian used so fluently, but a copy of the dreaded Articles of War – the document that essentially abrogated the civil rights of anyone serving in His Majesty’s Navy. An article on how medicine was practiced, diagrams of the essential bits of a ship, and a brief explanation of how the Royal Navy was organized during the Napoleonic Wars makes this essential for any grass-combing landlubber of a writer who doesn’t know a head from a halyard.

2. Every Man Will Do His Duty (Hattendorf & King (again), Henry Holt, 1997)

This book covers the period of 1793-1815. An excellent selection of first-hand accounts, log entries, and source material drawn on by the likes of CS Forester and Patrick O’Brian, both of whom borrowed heavily from the adventures of Thomas Cochrane, Sir James Gordon, and other real-life naval officers. The excerpts from the memoir of one officer who spent time as a POW in France could spawn any number of plot bunnies all by itself. It isn’t a reference in the strictest sense, but the language gives a feeling for the time that no textbook could.

3. English Through the Ages (Brohaugh, Writer’s Digest Books, 1998 )

Not sure if your 1800 sailor would use the term ‘pile-driver?’ This incredibly useful tome has words indexed and cross-referenced to the page where the word passed into general use… so, given the way the language migrates, you find that you may safely put the word in his mouth, since its pedigree says 1775. But he wouldn’t ask a friend, “Are you okay?” since that wasn’t heard of until 1839.

4. The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy (Rodger, 1986, W.W Norton)

This book deals with a period slightly earlier than the Napoleonic Wars, but it’s the era under which many adults of that age first went to sea as boys, most of them 14 or younger. Wooden World has useful charts – how many guns would you find on a Third-Rate man-o-war? How many lieutenants on a sloop? It also shows how things altered in His Majesty’s Navy over a few decades, from an age where sailors might complain of a bad captain with some hope of relief to a structure where the ordinary seaman could only pray that a bad captain would be killed before he took the whole crew with him.

5. A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, Grose, Dorset Press, 1992.

As Erastes has posted elsewhere on this blog, a very useful book, and very colorful. If only someone had thought to index it, it would be very much more useful, because in its present condition it gives an interesting browse but a frustrating search. If you happen upon ‘wapping mort,’ you know she’s a whore (tis pity..) but you can’t start with “prostitute” unless you have an hour to search.

6. Colonial American English (Lederer, A Verbatim Book, 1985)

This is a step up from Grose in terms of organization. This contains not only slang, but ordinary terms (eg, ‘fustian,’ that favorite of Heyer, is “a coarse, stout, twilled cotton.”) It also gives hints of how words have changed – “manure” used to mean working a field (a quote from a letter reveals that George Washington once “manured a field and then laid dung on it,”which would seem awfully redundant in the currant usage.)

7. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, (Benet et al, 1st ed 1948, Harper & Row.)

Do you want your character to toss off a reference to a contemporary work but you’re not sure if it had been written yet? This is not only useful for that purpose, it’s interesting to browse through. Where else would you look up “ode” and find you have Pindaric, Horation, and irregular to choose from?

8. Pages Passed from Hand to Hand (Mitchell & Leavitt, Houghton Mifflin,
1997.)

This book is a collection of what the title says: many of the excerpts in it were not published at all, or published only after the writers’ death. EM Forsters’s Maurice is among them; at the time it was written, censorship prevented its publication. This is another book useful mostly for inspiration and the sense of speech patterns, and ideas. There’s a big, conspicuous time-period missing in this collection; the period between 1757 and 1857, when persecution against “sodomites” was fierce.

9 My Dear Boy: Gay Love Letters through the Centuries (the indispensable Rictor Norton, Leyland Publications, 1998.)

What can you say about a book that contains snippets of love letters from as long ago as 139 AD to as near as 1960? This is a fascinating window into history and the human soul, and another excellent source of how men spoke and wrote… and an illustration of why ‘happy ever after’ is a bit of a stretch for most historical m/m couples.

10. Debrett’s The Stately Homes of Britain (Flower, Webb & Bower, 1982)

Bless the history-lovers of England and the second-hand stores of Ontario! I’ve found some real gems since moving here, and this is one of them. It’s considerably easier to describe a staircase and gallery (the better to spy from, my dear) if you have a picture of the entryway and stair of Antony House open before you. I would love to someday take a “stately homes” tour, but in the meantime, this book and others like it are a good second-best. Before you can set the scene for a reader, you have to set it for yourself.

Ten books seems a good round number to include in this sort of post – I’d be happy to hear suggestions from anyone out there. You may see another book list from me, or other Macaronis, in the near future.

 

Release of new novel, CONFLICT

I am happy to announce the release of CONFLICT,  the sequel to my novel CANE.  I seem to have been waiting a long time for the release of the follow up novel but it’s been worth all the effort

BLURB:
Two men, one war. Can love survive when each takes a different side?

Leaving his lover behind to support the Abolitionist cause, Piet Van Leyden finds himself leading one of the first all-black Union troops
into the heart of battle. Reuniting with free slave and former love, Joss, brings some comfort, but will his presence tempt Piet into forgetting the love waiting for him at home?

Sebastian Cane wonders how he’s able to go on without Piet by his side. When a series of unfortunate events lands him a prisoner of the Union, Seb knows he must rely on his wits and his love for Piet to survive…and get home to him.

EXCERPT:
It was difficult for Pieter to concentrate on Grainger’s words. Of course he had thought on the possibility of running into Joss once it was permitted for blacks to join the army, but he had never really believed it would happen. There were literally thousands of men in the Union army, the numbers rising all the time and the odds must be enormous.

His thoughts faltered again as he heard the lieutenant state the private’s name. Peters? Joss had taken… Pieter didn’t know what he felt about it, that Joss had taken that as his name. Flattered? Appalled? Touched? Oh, Joss!

“Peters?” Pieter queried haltingly, his voice sounding odd even to his own ears.

“Yes, sir,” Joss replied, keeping his voice formal, staring over his commander’s shoulder. Then abruptly he shifted his eyes and looked directly at Pieter. “Named for the only man who ever showed me a kindness, sir.”

Pieter stared at his old friend and ex-lover, emotion running through him to find him looking so well. “I see,” he replied softly. “Thank you, private.”

“Sir!” Joss said smartly, stepping back into line.

Pieter knew he gave orders and passed out praise and criticism in equal measure, but when the day ended the only thing he could clearly remember was the look in Joss’ eyes as they had stared at each other. Pieter just had to talk with him but he couldn’t simply single him out to speak to privately without reason. A company commander would have no cause to communicate with a private soldier without going through junior officers, unless for censure or commendation.

He paced his tent for thirty minutes until he recognized there was a way. Grainger had inadvertently given it to him.

“Grainger!” he called, sticking his head out of his tent, looking round for the lieutenant.

“Here, sir,” a voice floated from nearby in the dark and then the pale face of the lieutenant came into view.

“That private, the one who you introduced?”

“Peters, sir?”

“Yes, that one. Send for him. I want to have a few words and he should be ideal for providing me with background.”

“Yes, sir, immediately.”

Pieter sat in the rickety chair behind the small folding table in his small tent. He was nervous at the prospect of seeing Joss again, and being able to talk to him. Pieter smiled at his own reaction, he knew it wasn’t at all logical.

Presently, the lieutenant brought Private Peters inside the tent and the black man saluted his officer smartly, eyes staring straight ahead, back ramrod straight as he stood to attention.

“At ease, Peters,” Pieter said, a surreptitiously shared look between them at Joss’ choice of surname, and then with a glance at Grainger he added, “Thank you, Lieutenant. I will take it from here.”

Grainger glanced from his captain to the private as if silently asking if he were sure, but he merely nodded, saluted and left.

Pieter just stared at Joss for a long moment and his old friend stared back and slowly smiled. He was suddenly assaulted with images of the two of them together, long years ago when all that mattered were those snatched moments together. Memories of his hands moving slowly as they skimmed over Joss’ ebony skin; Joss kissing him with abandon and each murmuring promises of forever. Those had been naïve times he realized now but they had been good times.

Things were very different now, the love he’d felt for Joss then had been real but he knew it paled into comparison with what he’d learned he was capable of, but he would never regret his feelings for Joss. Suddenly Pieter’s face was split by a grin and he rose and strode around the table, and the two men embraced. They didn’t hold the hug for long, both being aware of the difficult situation.

“God, it’s good to see you looking so well,” Pieter commented as he retook his seat. “Grab a stool,” he said as an afterthought.

Joss did as he was asked and sat opposite his captain. “Oh yeah, I never expected to see you here.” He hesitated a moment, giving Pieter a long look.

“What?”

“I didn’t know if you were still in Louisiana,” Joss explained, his voice low.

Pieter nodded, dropping his eyes as he said, “I didn’t want to leave Sebastian. I remained as long as I could, but I just wasn’t able to stay among those people down there. I was… I couldn’t keep bottling up my real feelings and it was starting to…to. I didn’t want to damage what we had by staying,” his voice barely above a whisper as he spoke. He looked up at Joss then, attempting to smile at his friend, but it might just as well have been a grimace.

Joss recognized the sorrow in Pieter’s eyes that his friend was trying to hide, the ex-slave knew him too well.

After a moment, Pieter continued, “I tried to persuade Seb to come up north with me, not that I really expected he would. He has too much of a commitment in Louisiana.”

Reaching across the small table, Joss laid his hand over Pieter’s and gave it a small squeeze, attempting to comfort him. “I’m sorry, Piet, but I can’t say I’m surprised. His family have lived there for generations, don’t suppose he feels he can simply walk away from that.” He didn’t add that he also felt that if Cane had loved Pieter
as much as he claimed he ought to have had different priorities. It would be no kindness to Pieter to voice that thought.

“I know and also in the few letters I did manage to receive from him before the mail stopped getting through, he admitted to feeling a greater responsibility to his slaves now and that…” Pieter stopped, as if remembering just who he was speaking to. He shrugged an apology.

Joss looked Pieter square in the eyes and commented, “Well, we know who to thank for that change in outlook, don’t we?”

“Enough about me,” Pieter said decidedly. “How about you?”

Joss gave Pieter a quick rundown of his life since they had parted in New Orleans, admitting that after a slow, difficult start the life he now had was good. He explained a little about Nathaniel and how the old Negro had helped shape his new outlook. Joss told him that Nathaniel had even taught him to read, and he reminded himself that he should show Pieter the letter he’d written when he got the opportunity.

He admitted he was glad to be able to accept responsibility for his own life, though it had been hard at first to get work and he had felt so lost and unsure most of the time until Nathaniel had taken him under his wing.

He gave a deprecating laugh. “Strange as it sounds,” Joss confessed, “I have felt happier since I joined up. Even after a year or so of freedom I was used to the,” he sought for the word he wanted and smiled wryly when he remembered it, “constraint of slavery and oddly I missed the…structure it gave my life.” He shook his head at his own confused thinking and Pieter smiled sadly at what had been done to people like Joss.

Joss regarded Pieter, giving his old friend a long assessing look. A little unnerved by the stare, Pieter asked, “What?”

“You’ve changed,” Joss said quietly and as Pieter frowned, he explained. “You’re more…comfortable, more sure of yourself.” Eyes lighting up as if Joss suddenly understood, he smiled broadly and added, “You know who you are.”

<end excerpt>

Available from Phaze Books: http://www.king-cart.com/Phaze/product=Conflict/exact_match=exact

[There is in fact a longer excerpt available if you follow the link on the book page at Phaze, as per the above link]

Stevie
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