Quaint Secondary Characters

Writing the third chapter of BEWITCHED yesterday, I was struck again by how much I like creating strange secondary characters. It seems I've got a special fondness for the absurd, and indeed one of the things I absolutely adore about researching Regency life is finding out about people's eccentricities.

So my hero got stuck with an ancient butler/valet with a terrible lisp:

"Thur?" Hobbes shuffled into the study-cum-library. The trusty valet, his cheeks hollow, his tufty hair carefully combed across his balding head, looked as if he had been born at the dawn of the last century. The breath rattled in his chest, giving the impression he was about to perish on the spot.

(The "thur" I took from Pratchett's Igors. I just couldn't resist; the tempation proved to be too much *g*)

Goodbyes

Today I said goodbye to the house where my family lived since I was ten. In a few days' time it'll be sold and I'll never enter it again. So today I cried a little for the child I had been, but all in all, I can't say I'm sad to let the house go. As my Mum said, it holds too many bad memories. Too many ghosts to haunt one's dreams. I still remember the day we moved in, the day the furniture was brought up north all the way from the Black Forest. There were long traffic jams on the motorways that day, so the furniture and my parents were late. I remember sitting on the wooden stairs in my room and reading Oliver Twist. I loved these wooden steps, that part of my room high up under the room, from where you could see the planes rise into the sky from Frankfurt Airport. I was filled with so many hopes and dreams that day – most of which were shattered in the following years. They say that your childhood and youth is the best time of your life. Yet I would never want to relive that time again. There's a reason why I'll never ever go to a class reunion. And it isn't as if the teachers didn't like me. But then, they never helped me either, did they? So many shattered dreams, a child robbed of its childhood. There isn't much of human pettiness that can shock me today. And yet, when I walked through that house today, that empty shell of a past life, I realized I've finally slipped away from that past. Of course, it will never go away, it will always be part of me, but it did not destroy me. Instead it made me stronger. It taught me to stand up for myself. To fight viciously when there's the need. Nice and harmless, but might get vicious when crossed, that's me. *g* I am no longer that sad and lonely child. The past no longer holds me in its thrall. I have finally come into my own.

And so I went home with a smile. :O)

Wednesday P.S.: Interesting Things My New Characters Did

In a flashback the heroine ended up covered with blobs of frog remains.

Somehow I suspect that reading Terry Pratchett has ruined me for writing further dark, dark, DARK romances like TLB. Even though BEWITCHING will have its dark moments, too! (And the hero'll end up with a dagger or a sword or something sticking in his shoulder. That's pretty dark, right?) (But, hey, it's better than letting mountains drop on your protagonists like some -- of my favourite -- authors are fond of doing. *ggg*)

Among the things I hate most ...

... is waiting. Waiting sucks. At the moment I'm waiting to hear from either my agent or my editor to hear

A) whether they survived reading the erstwhile Dratted WIP (my editor went on vacation last week; he probably found the reading experience so ghastly, he urgently needed some rest afterwards)

and

B) whether they like it. Or whether they at least think it would be possible to transform it into something they could like.

*sigh*

But I'm not twiddling my thumbs, no-no, I'm preparing a Christmas surprise for my readers. :O) So do you know any bookshop near you which carried (or still carries -- let's be optimistic) THE LILY BRAND and would like to receive some promo material? Then drop me a wee mail and let me know!

Oh yes, and of course, the semester at uni has started again. So it's back to teaching for me (5000 years of British history in 9 lessons. Hooray!) (At least I don't have to take that end-of-term exam -- hehe)

Hugs and smooches to all the faithful readers of my lovely pink blog! *mmmwah*

Anniversaries

On 14 October it's been a year since I went for my first contract with Dorch. Already a year that I'm a published author.

And I still can hardly believe it. :O)

Building Characters

Writing the first chapter of a new novel, the exposition where you introduce the main characters and the lay the groundwork for the main conflict, is always something very exciting. For you don't just introduce the characters to the reader, you introduce them to yourself. Before you sit down to write, you might already have some idea of the hero and the heroine, but only during the writing they become fully fleshed-out characters. At the beginning you never quite know how they're going to turn out (might I remind you of the heroine of the dratted WIP? the heroine who ended up holding a knife? yes, that's exactly the sort of unpredictability I'm talking about!).

Normally I don't work with pictures of movie stars. That's why I usually find questions like "Which actor would you like to see in the role of this and that character from this and that book?" so difficult: I can't say because that's not the way I imagine books -- neither my own nor other people's. The characters come onto the stage as themselves. Sometimes as manga characters, but still, as themselves.

With BEWITCHED it's different: this time I started with pictures of Annett Louisan, a German singer (on her website you can find sound samples; my favourite songs from Bohème are "Das Spiel" -- The Game --, "Das Gefühl" -- The Feeling --, and "Das Liebeslied" -- The Love Song), and Eric Stoltz, the film star, -- and voilà -- Amy and Sebastian were born. :O)

On Tuesday I Got Mail

A package to be precise.

What's so cool about writing for academia? You'll get author copies of books waaaaay to expensive to buy! For example, today's wonderful package (Don't you just love getting parcels and packages and such? It's a bit like Christmas!) contained the Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy in 3 volumes, which normally costs about $ 350. I got it for free because I contributed two articles: one on dragons, another on Peter S. Beagle's THE LAST UNICORN (which is, btw, a truly wonderful book, in case you haven't read it yet or just know the film). Apart from these academic marvels (hehe), the encyclopedia is beautifully layouted, has got lovely covers and the foreword is written by Neil Gaiman. Gary Westfahl, the editor, did an awesome job coordinating and editing 600 entries from 150 contributors. I am so, so happy I was able to be part of this project!

Fridge Poetry

Since Friday I'm the proud owner of a box of magnets for fridge poetry. And quite fittingly, the theme of that box is "Love Poetry". Cool, isn't it: romance author own box for love fridge poetry! Never mind, the results so far have been either really, really cheesy or very, very whiny (and cheesy) OR rather dada (because of missing words). It's so much fun! And confuses the cats. *g* Hehe.

So here comes fridge poem No 1. for your amusement:

Roses blush

armorous whisper

at a rainbow

(Don't say I didn't warn you!)

The Last of the Week

This morning I got a real big scare: stepped on my scales -- and nearly dropped dead: 70 kilos. SEVENTY!!!! AAAAAAAARGH!!!! Six kilos in one week, just because I've eaten a kilo of gingerbread?!?!?! (Well, it might have been more than a kilo) (Oh yes, and there were some cookies, too, if memory serves right) How unfair is that? I mean, this couldn't be happening, right? Not after I spent the last eight weeks in writing hell! I mean, I deserved that gingerbread! Yes, I did! And fate couldn't really be so cruel as to give me six more kilos of fat just because of the gingerbread! Argh!

Terrible tearing at hair ensued plus spontaneous decision to start exercising again. Put TaeBo cassette into the VHR -- VHR is no longer working. Argh! Argh! More panic! Dragged stepper (the one where you don't just step up and down, but also wriggle your butt and hopefully gain gracefully thin waist, shapely thighs and firmest butt in the universe in a jiffy) (haha!) in front of the TV and wriggled butt for 10 minutes or so. After 10 minutes the TV programme turns really bad. And who wants to step wriggling butt while watching the most horrid shows/films/what not imaginable??? Besides, I hadn't had breakfast yet.

Still, beside my first babystep towards shapely butt, the 70 kilos continue to bother me. Like, LOTS. Fortunately, my parents don't live far away so I could go and try out their scales (while my mother was out visiting my greataunt) (of course, you don't step on scales when your mother is somewhere nearby and might comment on your weight! Thank you. No.) And lo and behold! it turned out my scales are broken! Yeah! Great relief! *big smile*

~*~

I started reading the manga of HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE today and I'm totally loving it. It's fully colored and allows you to enjoy the imgages from the film once again. Lovely!

I hope I'll get to update my homepage tomorrow. At least post the new contest. When you're a computer daftie, everything seems just a little bit more complicated. Ah well ...

Saturday Musings

A week has passed since the horrid deadline for the even more horrid WIP and after eating a at least a kilo of gingerbread in the past seven days, I'm slowly back to my normal self. I.e., still panicky, but no more headless-chicken-routine. But somewhat fatter than a week ago. Well, that can't be helped really. (Oh the sacrifices we make for our art!) (Perhaps you could imagine some suitably dramatic background music at this point. *g*)

As I said before, I'm working at putting together a German website. I had almost finished it today and triumphantly clicked the "Write HTML" button of my homepage-building-for-dummies programme -- and as a result it ripped my lovely homepage apart. All tables I had in there ruined in strange and mysterious ways. I am sooooohoooo frustrated!!!! ARGH!

Things I Found Out on Monday

Two years ago I went to London with my Dad (the father-daughter-bonding trip) and dragged the poor man up and down St. James's Street (Little Sandy: "Oh, look, that building down there looks exactly like St. James's Palace." -- Some moments pass. -- "Oh, that is St. James's Palace.") (Have I mentioned I've never been really that good in geography?). The main aim of walking up and down St. James's Street, however, was not finding out it leads to St. James's Palace, but looking at the gentlemen's clubs. All the old, famous London clubs can be found in this street, which accounts for the fact that during the Regency no gently bred woman would be seen driving or walking through St. James's St.

One of the most famous clubs there is White's. In the days of the Regency, Beau Brummell held court in the so-called Bow Window, which used to be the former entrance. And if you've read THE LILY BRAND, you'll know that the scene in which Troy meets the queer Lord Dudlin and later on confronts his cousin takes place in White's.

So, dragging my Dad up and down St. James's St. was research. And I took many pictures. Especially of White's. And of the famous Bow Window. Unfortunately, though, there're no doorplates or such which would tell you the stupid names of the stupid clubs. So you sort of have to figure it out on your own and with the help of your guidebook (which is not very specific, though, and includes only photo, which you somehow don't notice anyway because you're so excited). So, imagine geographically challenged, totally excited Sandy running up and down that stupid street, taking umpteen pictures, and grinning inanely -- and then, when she finally prepares the pics for putting on her website, she realizes she took pictures of the wrong club. And the house she thought was White's, is, in fact, Brooks's Club. Talk about being embrassed... *blush*

I must be the biggest glutton for punishment EVER

Guess what I did today (after eating a whole box of Lebkuchen and then worrying about how fat that's going to make me): I started a new WIP.

Yes, indeed, I started a new WIP.

I wrote seven pages and I totally enjoyed myself. I must be a bit of a hare-brained dodo. *g*

Oh, and I also started working on a German version of my website. I found a lovely design and now just need to write a bit of text to go along with it.

Website Contest

Hi everybody,

my book-launch-July-to-September contest is now closed. The winner of the "Escape to Britain" basket is Kim Westgaard.

Herzlichen Glückwunsch, Kim!!!!

In the course of the next few days -- as soon as I'm feeling like a normal human being again, that is -- I'll see to it that my website is updated and the details of the October contest are posted. This month's prize will be a new recording (i.e. minus the death of the overhead projector in the original recording) of the "Holland House" workshop I gave at the RWA conference in Reno -- that'll be your chance to find out what's fact behind the fiction of the Holland House dinner party in THE LILY BRAND

The Morning After

All right, so now it's official: no 12-hour orgasms for me, but 12-hour headaches. Hey, but at least the teeth don't hurt any longer!

Will spend today cleaning the flat and conquering the mountains of dishes that have mysteriously grown in my kitchen.

Will buy that box of Lebkuchen.

But what's better than chocolate or even Lebkuchen? The Adam Cooper Calendar 2006! yeah! That's what I bought just now -- for purely inspirational purposes, you understand. ;O)