Chinese

We're coming out in Chinese.
'Chinese, Chinese, Chinese,' she sings.
Lord and Spymaster and Spymaster's Lady will be out in Chinese

in a really bitty bitty print run.

If the books were beer, the Chinese run would be a microbrewery.
Largest reading population in the world.
A handful of books.

I am continually impressed by the oddness of reality.

Technical Topics -- Four Necessary Things

I was looking at an incomprehensible snippet of writing yesterday. Someone had posted the first 300 or so words of their novel for comment. A brave deed. Like the '300' Spartans, this sample had been sent out to die in the interests of the greater good. Got pretty much mowed down in the comments section, of course.

The snippet was not just unpublishable and non-commercial in present form, but literally unreadable.

Yenta that I am, I gave the author a basic on 'telling' and 'showing' in fiction. A small crit because this looks like a newbie.

But it got me thinking.

'How do I know this is not James Joyce?' asks I to myself, being in an introspective mood this morning before I drink my coffee.
'How do I know this is baaaad writing,
(or a joke, or madness, or possibly a Turing machine,)
instead of good-but-experimental stuff I'm too stuffy and stupid to understand?

Am I telling Bartok he needs a melodic line?'

So I sat and thought about the irreducible minimums of good writing.
I came up with four things.


The first is STORY.

In fiction, an aliquot of 500 words plucked anywhere out of a work is going to contain comprehensible story.

Lookit this passage pulled at random from Joyce:

Burke's! outflings my lord Stephen, giving the cry, and a tag and bobtail of all them after, cockerel, jackanapes, welsher, pilldoctor, punctual Bloom at heels with a universal grabbing at headgear, ashplants, bilbos, Panama hats and scabbards, Zermatt alpenstocks and what not. A dedale of lusty youth, noble every student there. Nurse Callan taken aback in the hallway cannot stay them nor smiling surgeon coming downstairs with news of placentation ended, a full pound if a milligramme. They hark him on. The door! It is open? Ha! They are out, tumultuously, off for a minute's race, all bravely legging it, Burke's of Denzille and Holles their ulterior goal.


Confusing? Wow, yes. But Joyce tells us a little bit of story in those 100 words.
(Though the posted snippet also tells story, so it passes the first test.)


The second requirement is PRECISION.

Good writing is words chosen with skill, set in place with care. The language is precise within a dozen parameters. Expression is economical. The good writer doesn't deal only with the definition of the words. Sound, connotation, and cadence all convey meaning.

Joyce, of course, is a master. The paragraph above is poetry. Not a syllable is laid down by happenstance.

The snippet posted for comment was filled with clunky language. Lookit one phrase:

she was gradually beginning to feel like the point of life where you wait for something to happen, was passing, and the best part was yet to come

This is not a poetic way to say,
'The time of anticipation was over. Now for the good part.'
It's a wordy, awkward way to say it.


The third requirement is ORDER.

At the sentence level, at the page or paragraph level, at the whole-opus level, a good work of fiction is skillfully and intelligently structured. This is especially true in experimental fiction.

The snippet -- this is a first page -- commits several obvious sins of structure. It is an info dump. It has POV problems. The sentences are too long, too complicated and contain too many disparate thoughts.

So this is not a skillful experimental structure. Such basic faults do not add to the work in any way.


The fourth, irreducible requirement of good writing
is that it is INTERESTING.

Unless you are lucky enough to be a Dead White Man from the 1800s, no one will ever be forced to read you. Good writing need not be pleasant, intelligent, accessible, grammatically correct, or morally uplifting . . . but it cannot be boring.

Boring is the cardinal sin of fiction.

Title, title ... I've got a title

We're going to call the MAGGIE story, The Forbidden Rose.

I'm pleased with the title, which I have decided has all kinds of thematic relevance.
Forbidden Rose is set in the same fictive world as Spymaster I and II.

They tell me Forbidden is not going to have scantily clad people on the front.
I don't know whether this is good or bad.
Many folks like the scantily.
But I'm game for anything. It'll be interesting to to see what they'll come up with in the not-so-much-nekkid category.

In other news, I'm doing the first plot layout of Adrian . . .
and working like the devil to fix Forbidden Rose,
(I'm not used to calling it that.)
which still has plotholes you could drop a mack truck through.

But, y'know ...
the fun part of writing, for me, comes when I'm doing the last fixes on a manuscript and making the language just right, or when I'm dreaming up the basic story.

Now I get to do both of these at once.
Yip -- as it were --ee.

Booklist -- The Top 10 Romances of 2009

And it's out ...

Booklist's Top Ten Romances of 2009,
Take a look at them here.

Always Look Twice by Geralyn Dawson
The Bridegroom by Linda Lael Miller
Dogs and Goddesses by Jennifer Crusie, Anne Stewart and Lani Diane Rich
Hot Flash by Kathy Carmichael
Laced with Magic by Barbara Bretton
The Magic Knot by Helen Scott Taylor
Practice Makes Perfect by Julie James
So Enchanting by Connie Brockway
Straight from the Hip by Susan Mallery
When the Duke Returns by Eloisa James

Way cool.

Technical Topics -- Registering Your Copyright

Since I'm not getting any appreciable amount of blogging done, I thought I'd repost something I put up elsewhere.

In answer to the question of whether someone should register a copyright for their unpublished manuscript:

The very short answer is that this is something you don't have to worry about.

The longer answer is . . .when you put your work in permanent form -- when you type it into the computer -- it is copyright RIGHT THEN.

The moment your work hits the computer, it has all the protection available under copyright law.
No further action is necessary.

Most folks who ask this question are worried about three considerations.

The first is -- 'What if somebody steals my work and claims it as her own?

What if a subeditor at the publishing house takes my manuscript and puts her name on it and submits it? What if somebody plagiarizes this scene?
How can I prove it's mine?'

I do not say this has never happened. But you are much more likely to get struck by lightning while playing the nose flute.

If you lie awake at night worrying about this, go register the copyright. It's cheaper than prescription sleep aids.

A simpler way prove authorship is to take the seven letters of your last name and start seven chapters in a row with those letters.
Or add seven sentences where the first word starts with those letters.
Or name characters after your greatgrandparents.

You now have evidence the manuscript is yours. Sleep in peace.

The second consideration is --'Will somebody steal my idea and go write their own book before I can get mine published?'

Skipping nimbly back from the brink of saying anything uncharitable about the originality of most people's ideas ...ideas cannot be copyrighted.

Even if your copyright registration proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that you were the first person in history to write about an m/m/m/f/m werewolf junk band that fights crime ... you can't keep other folks from using the same idea.


The third consideration --'Is registering copyright part of the business?' Am I supposed to do this to look professional?

Well, no. It doesn't make you look professional. It makes you look like a dork.

In e-pub and POD pub, copyright registration is often one of those upfront expenses the publisher passes on to the writer.
Check your contract to make sure the publisher hasn't grabbed the copyright himself.
Then pay to have the copyright registered if you want an official copyright.

In standard print publishing, the publisher pays to register copyright.

Little bits of Good News

I know. I know.

I promised I would be done with the manuscript on August One
and said I'd show up again bright and happy and full of blogwords after that.


Ummm .... Not quite.
I'm still stuffing the story octopus into the plot coke bottle.


So, not so much keeping up with the blog is going on, though it is only a postponement of blogkeepery and a veritable torrent of creativity will be unleashed when I finally finish the manuscript.

Maybe.


Two nuggets of news:

My Lord and Spymaster is out in Russian. Here. I had forgotten this was going to happen.
The title seems to be, 'My Sweet Spy'.
.

See the cover? Isn't that pretty?

In this case it is Sebastian who cannot keep his shirt on.
(Metaphor-taken-literally-itis sweeps Romancelandia.)
And Jess is blonde.
Yes. Yes. Yes.




The other news is that the French rights to Spymaster's Lady have been sold. Woot woot. Yes!

That one I'll be able to read.

Oh Frabjous Day.

Jo
My Indian name is AshkoHaHa.

Getting a RITA

I posted this in the comments trail, and then decided I would make it a post of its own. Because getting prizes is part of writing, and anyone who decides to be a writer should be prepared for What Happens in the Writing Life.

The RITA ceremony has about 3000 people there in a grand ballroom,
all of them sitting in rows and rows of chairs and looking down at this little stage in the far distance.

(How do they get 3000 people to come do this without giving them food? Though they give them food afterwards, of course.
But still ... would YOU come to hear thirty people get up on stage one after another to somewhat incoherently thank their editors and agents and families and stare like deer caught in the headlights?)

Since nobody can see the stage
the helpful technicians at RWA have set up huuuuuuge TV screens. Those puppies must be 40 feet high.

They show every pore on the faces of the RITA winners, (or Golden Heart winners,) when they get up to speak.
This is reality TV.

AAAARRRRGGGGHHH.

I do not say I would rather face a firing squad, because, of course, I would not.

I think.

But anyhow ... there I was and I had just found out I was NOT going to get a RITA for Spymaster's Lady, having lost out to the excellent and wonderful Pam Rosenthal whose work impresses me so much it is almost not like losing at all to lose to her ...
(though not quite,)
and I am now relieved because the ordeal is over and I am not going to have to mount the scaffold ...
ah ... podium ...
and can now relax,
and they say My Lord and Spymaster.

So I drop my glasses, without which I cannot see.
Anything.

And I drop my very short speech, which I have written in Big Letters on a piece of paper,
and which consisted of only five people to thank,
not because I am stingy but because I didn't think I was going to be able to say anything at all.

So they are gone somewhere in the darkness below my chair.
And I have to walk up on stage and make that set of acks.

I do not actually remember much that happened after this point. It was so horrible my mind has repressed it.

I do not AT ALL remember standing there and staring out at THREE THOUSAND PEOPLE and saying the right words, but I have been assured by people who wish me well that I did just that and that I did not make a fool of myself.

This is good.
This is very good.

I understand they played the theme from James Bond for the 'walkup'.
No memory of this.

So, anyhow, getting the RITA is like being beaten with long, flexible bamboo poles and at the same time being tossed in a blanket while someone plays La Traviata in your ear on a penny whistle. When you come to the other side you have this beautiful little gold statue sitting on the floor in front of your feet and you are sitting down again.

I am going to put the RITA on the shelf over my desk.

It's heavy, and the gold quill the lady holds is fragile. It would still be suitable for knocking burglars over the head with.

The RITA in the photos is not my RITA. It is the RITA of Jennifer Ashley who is here and who just wrote The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie. Go. Read it.

I WON!

I won the RITA for Best Regency Romance of 2009.

A Spanish Excerpt from Spymaster's Lady

The first chapter of Spymaster's Lady in Spanish can be found here..


Desarmado por un baile
Joanna Bourne
Editorial : Valery
Precio: 16,95€….

You can order it here.

Por supuesto, ella estaba dispuesta a morir, pero no
había planeado hacerlo tan pronto o de un modo tan incómodo,
y que llevase tanto tiempo, o que lo haría en manos
de un compatriota.

Se desplomó contra la pared, que era de piedra y muy
sólida, como suelen ser los muros de las cárceles.

—No tengo los planes. Nunca los he tenido.

—Soy un hombre de poca paciencia. ¿Dónde están
los planes?

—Yo no los tengo…

El bofetón llegó sin previo aviso. Durante un instante,
sintió que estaba a punto de caer inconsciente, pero luego se
recuperó, en la oscuridad, dolorida y con Leblanc.

—Te lo has ganado —Él tocó su mejilla, en el punto
donde la había golpeado y la obligó a mirarlo. Lo hizo con delicadeza.
Tenía mucha práctica en hacer daño a las mujeres—.

Continuemos. Esta vez tendrás más ganas de ayudar.

—Por favor, lo estoy intentando.

—Me dirás dónde has escondido los planes, Annique.

—No son más que un sueño de locos, esos planes
Albión. Una quimera. Nunca los he visto —Incluso mientras lo
decía, podía visualizar claramente los planes Albión en su mente.
Había tenido en sus manos las múltiples páginas, los bordes
manoseados, los mapas cubiertos de manchas y huellas dactila-
res, las listas escritas en letra pequeña y cuidada. «No voy a
pensar en esto. Si lo recuerdo, lo verá en mi rostro».


. . . and the rest of the chapter follows on the link above.

Book Covers . . .

. . . just saying.

Book Signing -- Washington DC, July 15

I will be at the RWA Literacy Signing
in Washington , D.C.
on July 15,
Wednesday,
from 5:30 to 7:30,
at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel.
That is right next to the Woodley Park/Zoo Metro.

The Literacy Signing is a wonderful cause.
Publishers donate their books to sell for the support of literacy programs.

My books are donated by Berkley Sensation/Penguin.


This year, the money goes to support ProLiteracy Worldwide.
Their website is here.

Some of the writers signing their latest books --

Shana Abe
Ann Aguirre
Victoria Alexander
Jo Beverley
Mary Blayney
Stephanie Bond
Celeste Bradley
Anna Campbell
Nicola Cornick
Jenny Crusie
Victoria Dahl
Claudia Dain
Jacquie D'Alessandro
Tessa Dare
Meredith Duran
Suzanne Enoch
Gaelen Foley
Susan Gable
Jenny Gardiner
Anne Gracie
Laura Lee Guhrke
Linda Howard
Elizabeth Hoyt
Madeline Hunter
Eloisa James
Sabrina Jeffries
Carolyn Jewel
Jayne Ann Krentz
Susan Krinard
Gennita Low
Donna MacMeans
Delilah Marvelle
Cathy Maxwell
Brenda Novak
Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Andrea Pickens
Mary Jo Putney
Julia Quinn
Deanna Raybourn
Patricia Rice
Nora Roberts
Pam Rosenthal
Anne Stuart
Sherry Thomas
J.R. Ward
Christine Wells
Lauren Willig
C.L. Wilson

That's only a few of them. .
(Print the list out. Drop by those wonderful authors.)

The whole list is here.

If you have my books, come by anyway and say hello.
I will give you a bookplate for the books you already own, that I haven't signed.
Here's two of the bookplates in this post.

They're really pretty in person.

Oh. Oh. That second picture there. The girl. That's what Maggie looks like.

EDITED TO ADD: This is me at the booksigning.

RITA: The Interview

I'm getting more and more excited about the upcoming RWA National Conference.

The RITA awards.
I'm nominated.

Did I mention that?
(. . .more than about fifty thousand times?)

I did an interview on getting nominated for the RITA a while back, for my local chapter of RWA.
I'm reprinting it here, which is quick to do and will not prevent me from a hard morning of work on the manuscript of MAGGIE.

Leah: So. Why did you enter the contest?

Jo: The RITA? Oh, the RITA is the big time for all of us. I think every Romance writer dreams of entering the RITA.

Leah: What do you hope to achieve from being named a finalist and possible winner?

Jo: RITA finalists seem to get a good bit of publicity at the National Conference. Some folks, when they're looking for a good read, leaf through the RITA Finalists.

I've seen it on book covers -- 'RITA Finalist'. I gotta tell you, that looks good. Not as good as 'New York Times Bestseller' --- but pretty good.

Leah: Did you celebrate the notification of being a finalist in any particular way?

Jo: My husband took me out to lunch. A place with tablecloths.

It's sort of a funny story. I got an e-mail telling me about the RITA nomination for Spymaster's Lady in the morning.

"Oh, yipeee!!!" yips I, bouncing about the room.

I will admit, I spent a moment regretting not getting the nom for My Lord and Spymaster, which is a book dear to my heart and nobody likes it as much as Spymaster's Lady and I feel protective.

But I said to myself, "Do not be greedy," and I did not repine.

Then we came back from lunch and I opened up the e-mail and there was the nom for My Lord and Spymaster.

I was knocked over and amazed and excited by the first nom. You can imagine how I felt about getting two.

My agent sent me the most beautiful bouquet of flowers. Oh my. Lovely.

Leah: What are your impressions of the competition? How does it differ from other contests you've entered (in terms of process, format)?

Jo: I don't think I've entered any other RWA Contests. I'm not much of a contest person, generally.
Entering the RITA isn't terribly complicated. You fill out a form online. That's straightforward.
The publisher was kind enough to send the books and pay the entry fee for me, so that part was dead easy.

When the Finalist nomination comes in, there's a flurry and a deadline and it all takes you by surprise. You have to get yet more books to RWA in Texas -- again, the publisher does that for you.

And you have to supply a publicity photo, (which I didn't have. I had my picture taken. This is an utterly daunting process,) and you have to dig up the 300 dpi files of your cover which have winkled themselves into a back corner of the computer.
This all has to be done in a mad rush.

You also have to buy a fancy dress, unless you are one of those folks who has a long black formal dress hanging in her closet at all times. There's another daunting prospect. Buying clothes.

Then all is serene sailing till you get to the National Conference. There, mysteries are performed and secret rites are held of which I know nothing. One may be sworn to secrecy at some point.

Leah: Will you be attending Nationals in D.C.? How will you celebrate if you are named winner?

Jo: I will be at National. There's a reception afterwards which is pretty celebratory. I'll be going to it to congratulate people in any case.

Technical Topics -- Secondary Character POV

I posted this over on Absolute Write in response to a question about when to go into the POV of a secondary character.

Being thrifty, I'll post it here too.

************
Going into the POV of a secondary character --

There are no 'rules'
(--that should be in neon somewhere--)
but you should have a good reason for going into a secondary character's head.

The good reason should be something more than just ...
-- this is an easy way to tell the reader where the cookies are hidden, or
-- neither of my POV characters are in this scene but I want to write it anyhow.

You might consider Omniscient Narrator in those cases. Or write around the problem.

I go into secondary characters' heads three times in two books.
(I think that's all.)

In two cases, this is a single excursion into their heads.
In none of the three cases does this POV choice
-- solve a plot problem or
-- convey information to the reader or
-- put us in a necessary scene we would otherwise find hard to enter.

I go into the secondary heads
to show something important about the secondary character and the way he sees the world.

In two cases, I want to put the reader 'outside' the main protagonists at a particular moment for complex reasons having to do with how the reader is emotionally connecting with the ongoing story.

When I went into the secondary POV, it was because this gave
(a) a refuge from involvement with the two protags,
(b) a new coign of vantage, and
(c) an insight into the minor character.

***************

Talking about two scenes here ...

First Scene:
The scene where Galba plays chess with Annique is an example of using secondary character POV as a refuge from the two protags.

How secondary is Galba?
Galba is sooooo secondary! He is so bloody secondary he could get a medal for it. Galba appears on stage only a half dozen times, all in the last quarter of the book. If you look at him objectively, he doesn't actually do anything.

So, leaving aside Galba's insight into Annique, which is fine and wise and all that, his POV scene is not to talk about any of the characters. It's what you might call constituent. It's there to serve a structural purpose.

Look where I've put his scene.

We got a big scene of Annique betrayed, on every level, by those she loved and trusted.
Ouch. ouchouchouchouchouch.
Grey has to watch her hurt and he can't do anything about it.
Ouch again.

Now we want to get on with action of the story because there's not much more to say about that emotional topic right there and, anyhow, the world hasn't stopped even though Annique is in pain.

But we don't have to skip directly from
Annique- (or Grey-) POV-in-pain to
Annique- (or Grey-) POV-getting-on-with-life

So we put in a Galba-POV to give a buffer and 'tell about' the transition period.
If I were a better writer I'd have put in a riveting scene of Annique's acceptance and recovery instead.
But I'm not. (pooh)

We could do the same buffering with a good long passage of description or something in Omniscient Narrator. But I like Galba and I'm glad to have a chance to crawl into his head.


Ok.
Second Scene:

Look where I gave us a scene of Adrian POV.

He is almost a third protag. Now contrary to what you might think, this does not make me want to fill the story up with his POV. He diverts attention from the H&H, which is not good.

So we keep his little POV scene short and simple.

This is Adrian swimming out to the smugglers' boat.

How is this constituent?
That scene falls at that halfway division in the story where everybody's crossing the Channel.
(I mean, just everybody.)

The Adrian-POV scene is a buffer between Annique's emotional experience on one side of the Channel and the other. It's there for structural reasons.

Anyhow ....
speaking generally,

what we have in those two scenes above is what I consider a good reason for switching into secondary-character POV or Omniscient Narrator POV.

Not so we can reveal information.
Not because it's the only way we can talk about this scene.
But for structure and pacing.

This 'secondary POV-ing' is a technique that lifts you out of the protags' emotional journey and forms a buffer when you're transitioning from one emotional place to another and you, like, don't want to do it too fast.

Fair Warning

Things will be quiet on the blog of the next six weeks.

The MAGGIE manuscript is due on August 1. I'm hunkered down at my desk, writing and proofing frantically. Later in August, when the trauma is past, I'll poke my head out again and do some useful and lengthy, (or at least lengthy,) posting.

Next big event is the RWA National, July 15 to 18. I'm nominated for two RITAs. Win lose or draw, this is going to be exciting.

I don't think you can actually tie in a RITA. There's probably a good reason for this.

MLAS detail

Wonderful reader Eva writes to ask ..

haven't found anything to help me understand how Grey & Adrian were captured and put in that French prison with Annique. I feel like it was something with Adrian's injury but I'm not sure why I believe that. I think I just get so lost in the story I forget to look for those missing pieces of information. Is it written somewhere?

Ah. Here we have wandered out of Annique's story and into the edges of Adrian's story.

In the weeks before Spymaster's Lady opens, Adrian is on assignment as the key element of a large operation. It's an important op indeed, since Grey is in France, in person, directing, and ready to pull Adrian out if it all goes south.

Spying his merry way through the operation, Adrian has the misfortune to run into an old adversary. Old adversary, old friend, old lover, old rival ... anyhow, she knows him very well.
It's just bad luck she's there. Sometimes, on an operation, you run into bad luck.

Covers are blown. Carefully laid plans go awry. Plots unravel. Adrian gets shot when he's naked in bed with his old lover.
She shoots him. Talk about your wake-up calls.

Our lad is out the window, grabbing his clothes on the way.

Adrian's done this much . . . the op can be salvaged. Grey and Doyle step in to do that. But Adrian's on the streets, running.

When Grey goes to scoop him up, they're both captured.

This all happens outside the bounds of Spymaster's Lady, though. We catch only the merest whiff of it there.

Plotting . . . plotting . . . plotting . . .

Sometimes, it's just one plot problem after another. You fix one, and another pops up.

Kinda like . . . this.

Spanish Spymaster

Spanish . . . Spanish . . . I am in Spanish.

¿Usted habla español? ¿Usted sabe alguien que habla español?
This is your chance.

Cool cover, isn't it?
I really like 'Annique in red silk'.

Babelfish says this title means 'Disarmed by a Dance'.
Ok.

They call Grey ... El jefe de los espías británicos. Isn't that wonderful? I will now think of Grey as El Jefe.

So far, this one wins the limited but fierce competition for 'Least Clothing Per Person on a Joanna Bourne Cover'.

I think Desarmado Por Un Bale goes for sale on June 15th.
I hope to someday hold this in my hands so I can figure out what all that stuff down along the bottom and in the lower right hand corner is. That circle stuff. Some city ...?

Now this cover is not just quite exactly how I think of Grey. It looks a bit like Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic.
But it is just beautifully composed, isn't it?

ETA -- In the comment trail it is pointed out that the cover figure appears on another book. There, it can be discerned that the mysterious circle is part of the dancing costume. Mystery solved. I am so pleased.

Spymaster's Lady in Russian

I seem to be out in Russian.

Here. and Here.

I do want to find out how to get a copy of it.

Has to be some way ...

Interestingly enough, the cover seems related to the scene, and they've got Grey's shirt historically correct.

!

The title in Russian apparently translates to 'Secret Courtesan'.

The God of Romance Titles has not finished toying with me.

This cover is truly in competition for 'Cover of a Joanna Bourne Book Most Related to the Actual Story'.

ETA -- The better translation of the title is 'The Courtesan's Secret'. Very nice. Thanks so much to Russian reader Ksu for help on this.

Technical Topics -- Beginnings

Let's say you have finished a good rough draft of the manuscript,
(Yipee!)
and you come back to look at the beginning,
and you don't know whether it's any good.

How do you judge a beginning?

You can do something like this here below.
This is just a starting point for thinking about your plot, but it has the merit of being both specific and brief.

1) Pick up the first three pages only.

-- Do these first three pages put you in an interesting place?
-- Does something happen?
-- Does that action give rise to what is going to happen in at least one scene after page fifty?
-- Do we connect with at least one character and her problems?
-- Do we understand who she is and what she wants?

2) Set the first three chapters to one side,
(over there on the edge of your desk,)
and look at the beginning of Chapter Four.

-- What action takes place before this point that is wholly necessary to tell your story?
-- Could you just as easily start the story here?

No, really.
Could you start the story right here and it would all be understandable and the plot would work just fine?


3) Slip a paperclip onto page 10, page 23, page 37 and page 48.
Read the story quickly, from the beginning.
When you get to the bottom of a paperclipped page, set it down and ask yourself:
--What intriguing question fills your mind right now?
-- Is that question so enticing that you must pick that manuscript up and read on?

4) Take out two colors of highlighter.
Yellow and fuschia maybe.
You're going to go through the first four chapters.

Use yellow to mark a line along

-- dialog, (with the exception of someone explaining and telling stuff,)
-- dialog tags,
-- a character thinking about something or someone they can see right in front of them,
-- an action that is happening onstage right now,
-- the POV character smelling, touching, tasting or hearing something,
-- the description of something the POV character can see.


Use fuschia to mark a long line along

-- anything that happened in the past,
-- a character thinking about something that is not immediately in front of her,
-- the description of something the POV character cannot see,
-- anything related to a character who is not present,
-- one person explaining anything at all to the other person,
-- one person telling the other person what happened somewhere else.


Do you have lots and lots of yellow?
Maybe 80% yellow?

That is the here-and-now of your story.
If the reader is not in the midst of the here-and-now of your story . . .
where is she?

5) Finally, just read the first five chapters.
Do you care about these people?
Do you see them headed somewhere?

It is an interesting exercise to go through this with authors you enjoy.
Pick up one of Nora Roberts' books that you've somehow managed to acquire in duplicate. Limber up your yellow marker.
It is instructive to see a master at work.

Technical Topics -- Words, Words, Words in MLAS

Here are some fine and careful points of word usage from My Lord and Spymaster, brought to you by the excellent Franzeca Drouin.

Franzeca, who knows everything about words, pretty much, and helps authors out when they're using them kinda careless like, lives at her website here.
And a very interesting website it is.

Drop by and look through her 'sources' if you're doing research anywhere in the period.



Leesee

We open on Page 2 with the perplexing matter of finicky.

The passage is: Pretty soon there'd be nobody in the street but her and that cat picking his way, finicky, across the cobbles. He had errands to run, that cat. You could tell by looking at him.

Franzeca points out that OED dates 'finicky' to 1825, with a note that it's mostly US. Googlebooks lets us find 'finicky' in print as early as 1819.

This is, unfortunately, seven years after the date of MLAS.

What folks would have said in C18 was 'finicking'. Fielding, for instance, says, "I have none of the cant of your fine finicking London chaps."

C19 saw the introduction of 'finicky' as an alternative. This robust variant eventually replaced 'fincking',
for which I am sure we are all grateful.
By the last half of C19, 'finicky' and 'finicking' are about equally common.

I looked at the two possibilities and dithered a second or two and chose finicky.

I'm accepting this word into my period vocabulary under my 'One Decade Rule'

What I figure is, slang and idiomatic usage didn't go just galloping into print in early C19. Respectable people disapproved of informal usage.
I'm allowing the lapse of a decade between idiom on the streets and appearance in print. Longer than that if the idiom is vulgar.

Americanisms aren't at all unlikely for my heroine. Jess dealt with Yankee merchants all the time.

As a sidebar --- Why 'finicky'?
'Finicking' sounds ye-olde-C18 to my modern ears. Sounds niffy-naffy. It's not the way my Jess would talk. I want the blunter 'finicky' to build her voice.

When I picked 'finicky' I knew I was dealing with a fairly new C19 word, but I admit I hadn't realized 1812 was cutting it quite so close.


Moving on to Page 6 of MLAS, we get 'caper'.

The passage is: Back when she engaging in criminal acts with some regularity she'd have called this a right pig of a caper.

'Caper', meaning a dodge or scam, dates in writing to 1839.

I comment on this here.

You saw the 'One Decade Rule' above?

I'd argue that thieves cant entered the written record long after the date it was actually used. In early C19 we have only a couple few 'dictionaries' that preserved a mere scant few hundred words of what must have been a wide and rich vocabulary. Almost certainly, any bit of the argot that made it into these dictionaries was old, old, old in the slums.
This is my 'Trash Talk Rule'.

I'm going to stake out the ground for yet another quibbling excuse. The 'Perfect Word' excuse.

Some technical jargon is just so simple and exact and irreplaceable and there is NO period equivalent so I take an aspirin and grit my teeth and use it.


Coming to page 6. Standby.

The passage is: She'd tried bribes, threats, blackmail--all the old standbys.

As Franzeca says, 'standby' depends on exact usage of standby; someone available to render assistance, 1801; a support or resource, 1861.

Ok. I was wrong. Wrong. Wrong!

Because I am using it in the 'support or resource' sense.

I suppose . . . this might be an independent early metaphoric usage.
Can I say that? Huh? Huh? Independent invention of the metaphor?


Now we come to a real zinger.
Ouch.

Page 20. 'black out'

The passage is: "Don't be stupid. Hurts everywhere." She decided to black out for a while. Her eyes slid shut and she went limp.

Franzeca dates 'black out' in the sense of 'to temporarily lose consciousness,' to 1940.

Arrrggghhh.

I should have known this. And it doesn't even sound period. It sounds C20.

I was just wrong.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
Mea culpa.



Page 40. 'unconscious'

The passage is: Damn. Was he really thinking that way about an unconscious woman?

Franzeca points out that 'unconscious' is old as meaning unaware. As a medical term indicating loss of consciousness, it dates only to 1860.


I didn't know.

Having bloopered this way, I would do this again. In fact, I probably will. My characters will continue to fall 'unconscious' right and left in future manuscripts, rather than faint or swoon or something.

I'm pulling out the 'Perfect Word' rule on this one.

This is another of those technical jargon words that are exact and clear and simple and don't have a robust period equivalent.

A really careful writer wouldn't use 'unconscious'. I'm going to be less careful and accurate. I assume the karmic burden of this.


Franzeca says ... "Page 42: and elsewhere 'Cockney' you capitalize, which seems correct to me, as a noun and adjective of ethnic origin. Mostly not capitalized in OED, and it doesn’t look right. Harrumph."

Well, I feel good about capitalizing.

Presumably a word that starts out as a proper name eventually gets tired of maintaining a capital letter and just sinks into small letters in exhaustion.

We will not encourage this slackness. One must have some standards.


Page 58: Borneo in OED, 1876; first treaty involving the island of Borneo and Britain, 1824. Because of political and administrative districts on Borneo, might not be referred to as island title, but political titles. Jess’s knowledge of shipping would make her more aware of this arcane information."

I love obscure and arcane. Certainly Jess would know the name of every island in the Pacific that exported anything and all its political nitpickery.

I figger, here, she just meant the island itself and that's what it was called.

For 'Borneo' as an exotic tropical island destination, see the map of 1683 here.


And Page 77, Do you mean 'strolled' or 'trolled'?

The passage is: If the Captain was Cinq, he probably strolled through Quentin's papers with great regularity. A man as careless as Quentin was just an incitement to treason.

My Jess is being metaphoric. Well, she'd be metaphoric in both cases, but in this case she's being metaphoric with 'strolled'.


And finally, we come to page 96.
'charcoal' as a color, "charcoal grey", 1952.

The passsage is: What does one wear to ransack a warehouse? Black, I think, and the charcoal waistcoat. Tasteful, yet understated."


Phooey. I'm going to decree that Adrian's not using 'charcoal' as a color in the sense of 'green', 'blue' or 'red'. He's being metaphoric, the way he might talk about the 'snuff' driving coat or the 'coffee-and-cream' jacket or the 'claret' waistcoat.

He's making a direct trip from the colored object to the metaphoric destination without a single brief stop in the artists' pallet.