Today’s the 29th – time to pick a random winner for my tiny piece of the Fall Frenzy contest! I guess a lot of people use web-based randomizers for this sort of thing, but I am old school, and also happened to have a dice pouch right here on my desk. (Yes, I am that kind of geek.)
So, with four entrants, I rolled my D4, and the winner is… Commenter #4: Integgy! Congrats! I’m turning it over to Vivian Arend now, and you should get hooked up with your prize soon. I hope you enjoy the book!
I’ve just completed a rough first draft of my very first attempt at writing historical romance. Hooray! It was an interesting process, filled with all-new kinds of research, and a lot of time staring at the blinking cursor of my word processor wondering what terms a well-bred young lady in the late 18th/early 19th century would use to describe a penis. (Note to self: remember this for the next time someone asks what you do for a living!)
I’ll be doing a quick revision and clean-up this afternoon, and then I’ll be sending the story off to first readers for their feedback. Revise a couple more times, submit to anthology, annnnd done! End of my historical romance career.
Except, apparently not. Whilst writing this story, I had a sudden, intense desire to take the main characters on another adventure. Perhaps a novel-length adventure. With action and intrigue as well as romance and demons. The working title is “Mary Bennet and Nick the Incubus Fight Crime,” which should give you an idea of what I’m thinking, here.
And you know what would make this even more fun? If I write it in 30 days! That’s right, dear readers – I’m doing NaNoWriMo. If you are, too, feel free to look me up. My user name is ElizaReeve. We can be buddies!
In the meantime, it’s back to the research mines for me. I’ve got a copy of Harriette Wilson’s memoirs and a highlighter, and I’m not afraid to use them.
I’m writing an erotic romance short right now that’s set in approximately-Regency England. It has a fantasy slant to it – an incubus, to be precise – but it’s definitely outside my usual range. Which means… All-new research!
“Yaaay,” she typed weakly.
Actually, I love doing research, most of the time. There are a few exceptions. I’ve been working on a space opera for ages, and while I love the characters and the plot and so much of the setting, I loathe doing the chemistry and physics legwork. Ugh, lasers!
But even when there’s math (my ancient foe!) involved, I do love learning new things. Over the years I’ve been writing, I’ve learned about age of sail warfare, blacksmithing, codes and code-breaking, and more ways to grievously wound a hero and have him survive than you can shake a stick at. I’ve also brushed up on my knowledge of founder effects and other biological oddities, improved my Latin, and spent some time working out how a professional researcher would do her work (kind of meta, isn’t it?).
Somehow, I’ve avoided using dictionaries as research aides in any serious way until now, though. But since I’m writing a story that takes place in an actual historical setting (as opposed to a second world fantasy setting, for example), I have to be more careful with my word use than I usually am. The Oxford English Dictionary has come to the rescue more than once, giving me dates of usage for various meanings of various words. But what’s even more fun than that, I’m learning, is looking at dictionaries that are roughly contemporary to the time period I’m writing.
I found one at Project Gutenberg that is fascinating, informative, and hilarious: the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue .
One of the gentleman who contributed apparently went by the name of “Hell-Fire Dick,” which gives an idea right at the outset of what the text will be like. It’s been fun to see some of the language that didn’t make it into many of the novels that form part of our literary canon from that period. And while a fair number of the entries seem a little too over-the-top to have been in common usage (if they were really in usage at all), they’re certainly entertaining. I think my favorite has to be the definition for “Carvel’s Ring”:
The private parts of a woman. Ham Carvel, a jealous old doctor, being in bed with his wife, dreamed that the Devil gave him a ring, which, so long as he had it on his finger, would prevent his being made a cuckold: waking he found he had got his finger the Lord knows where.
Though I was also deeply impressed by the entry for “sh-t sack” (the bowdlerizing is the author’s, not mine):
A dastardly fellow: also a non-conformist. This appellation is said to have originated from the following story:—After the restoration, the laws against the non-conformists were extremely severe. They sometimes met in very obscure places: and there is a tradition that one of their congregations were assembled in a barn, the rendezvous of beggars and other vagrants, where the preacher, for want of a ladder or tub, was suspended in a sack fixed to the beam. His discourse that day being on the last judgment, he particularly attempted to describe the terrors of the wicked at the sounding of the trumpet, on which a trumpeter to a puppet-show, who had taken refuge in that barn, and lay hid under the straw, sounded a charge. The congregation, struck with the utmost consternation, fled in an instant from the place, leaving their affrighted teacher to shift for himself. The effects of his terror are said to have appeared at the bottom of the sack, and to have occasioned that opprobrious appellation by which the non-conformists were vulgarly distinguished.
Isn’t research fun?
Authors Vivian Arend and Moira Rogers are holding a gigantic series of give-away drawings for ebooks right now, and as part of that they’re giving bloggers the opportunity to give away one of their books – Arend’s Wolf Signs – on their own sites. Awesome!
From the Fall Frenzy site:
Win a copy of A Wolf Signs by Vivian Arend!
Robyn Maxwell doesn’t care that her brother has to cancel out on their backcountry ski trip. She can do it alone. The fact she’s deaf doesn’t make her survival skills any weaker. The chance to get away from it all and relax in the Yukon wilderness is just what she’s been craving.
Meeting wilderness guide Keil at the cabin starts cravings of another kind. Keil’s one hot hunk of ripped, tasty male. Now she has to deal with raging hormones as well as strange questions about wolves and mates and challenges to the death.
Keil was trying for a nice reflective retreat before challenging for the Alpha position of his Alaskan pack. He wasn’t planning on meeting the woman destined to be his mate, or finding out she’s not aware she has the genes of a wolf.
Between dealing with his accident-prone younger brother, a deaf mate with an attitude and an impending duel to the death, his week—and his bed—is suddenly full.
Far from the relaxing getaway any of them had in mind…
Leave a comment for a chance to win a digital copy of Wolf Signs!*
This contest is a part of Moira Rogers’ & Vivian Arend’s Fall Frenzy Event. For your chance to win books, gift certificates, ereaders and more, visit http://www.moirarogers.com/contests/
Frequent readers here might remember that I had some mixed feelings about a few aspects of Wolf Signs, but overall I really enjoyed the book. It was a fun read, with a great female lead, and I’m thrilled to be able to offer a copy to someone else who’ll enjoy it, too!
*So here’s what you do for your chance to win it here: Comment on this post by October 28th with a recommendation for one of your favorite werewolf stories, romantic or otherwise, whether that’s a novel, short story, or movie. Be sure to use an email address you actually check when you fill out the comment form! On the 29th, I’ll choose a random winner from among the commenters. That’s it!
