Chapter 3 Is Complete!!!!

I've just finished Chapter 3, which means we've arrived and passed the first turning point of the story. I'm not yet quite satisfied with the delivery of the last sentence, which constitutes something of a punch line. So I'll need to look at it again in a few days' time.

I've found that I absolutely love writing dialogue for my hero and his friends. They're constantly bickering and bantering, and it's a challenge and a joy to give them witty and elegant lines. Well, at least I hope they are witty and elegant!

Spent some time today studying the location and the layout of Albany, a set of appartments in Piccadilly. Actually, I think I took a picture of it when I was last in London: it's situated right next to what is now the Royal Academy of Arts.

Vanity Fair

Just now I've watched the second half of VANITY FAIR and I have to say I've enjoyed this film very much (and why not? James Purefoy looks hot! Especially in those Regency clothes!!!) -- even though it's probably not really a good adaptation of the novel itself. For one thing, Becky is just too nice in the film, more a victim of her situation than taking part in the game of using other people. And of course, given the length of the novel there must have been bits ... chunks really ... missing. As I said: I need to read that novel! :O)

One scene I absolutely adored was the Duke of Richmond's ball in the night before the Battle of Waterloo. When the call to action came, all those men in uniforms rose and swept through the ballroom like a tidal wave of reds and blue, adorned with golden flitter. If I'll ever need to describe that ball, I know what to use for inspiration!

Welcome to WinterWonderLand!

It's snowing -- or rather, it has been snowing here in Frankfurt, Germany. So now everything is dusted with white. It reminded me how strange winter nights are when there's snow: snow brightens the night. All light is reflected and all sounds muffled. (Note to self: Make sure to write a winter night scene for BEWITCHED!)

Today I bought Mira Nair's VANITY FAIR with Reese Witherspoon as Becky Sharp. So far I've watchec about an our or so of that film and I'm loving it! It's set in the Regency, it's got Reese Witherspoon in it -- of course I'm loving it! :O) I know that at least one (historical) character that appeared in THE LILY BRAND is in VANITY FAIR, too: the Marquis of Hertford (he's the guy who stares at Lillian in the first ballroom scene and who doesn't seem to take when a blob of wax drops onto his companion's bossom) appears as the Marquis of Steyne in Thackeray's novel. But I'm sure there'll be even more famous people to spot! (Gosh, I really have to read that novel some time soon!)

The Inspiration for the Snippet Below

I am a very visual writer: I like using photographs or pictures for putting my settings together. (If you would like to find out what places inspired the settings of THE LILY BRAND, go to the Secrets of THE LILY BRAND page on my website.)

For evoke a specific feeling or atmosphere, however, I sometimes rely on other sources than just pictures of places. When I wrote the snippet I posted yesterday, I used LUNA, a painting by Alphonse Mucha, for inspirational purposes. And the prologue for BEWITCHED opens with a panorama of the English Midlands, which was inspired by Tennyon's "Lady of Shalott":

On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
By the margin, willow veil'd,
Slide the heavy barges trail'd
By slow horses; and unhail'd
The shallop flitteth silken-sail'd
Skimming down to Camelot . . .

So the prologue shows field and meadows divided by a canal, and on the water a barge full of Black Country coal. :O)

Kisses of the Muse

Today the muse kissed me early in the morning and quite fittingly I've just seen my hero return home in the wee hours of the morning:

Perhaps it was due to the punch, for just like it, Lady Worthington's musicale seemed to grow on a man, and Fox liked the second part much better than the first. So much did he enjoy himself that he drove home whistling madly as if to compete with the now absent sparrows on the rooftops. A myriad of stars glittered in the nightly sky, a diamond-besprinkled coat for the new moon. Pale like a maiden's breast, her thin crescent peeked shyly out from behind a flock of clouds.

First Musings of the Week

Yesterday I didn't only find out that my funky inner hair color is purple (see comments below), but I also continued working on the third chapter of BEWITCHED. Things moved a bit sluggishly, mostly because the first big turning point happens at the end of that chapter and I sometimes find it a bit hard to write these very important scenes. After all, they define the web of the story and hold the whole thing together. (And I'm always too critical of my own work. *g*)

In the evening I then turned to WOLFENBACH once more and played a little with the ending. For I've found that the revised ending that is played out in the manuscript I handed in, doesn't work quite as well as UNrevised ending I thought I'd better not hand in. Duh. In the revised ending the hero's change of heart comes rather abruptly, thus robbing the ending of its emotional punch. In the UNrevised ending, however, the hero doesn't agonize as much over his change of heart. Soooo, I'm planning to insert a little scene that shows him standing on the stairs, gripping the banister tightly, and musing. ("I never knew ...") And agonizing. (Painful closing of eyes and clenched jaw and working of muscles in throat.) And only then is he allowed to drag the heroine off to bed. Or rather, drag her to the big, old grandfather clock and then off to bed. *g*

What I really like about the lead couple in WOLFENBACH is that their relationship -- once they manage to make it work -- involves a lot of playfulness. In fact, after all the agonizing and high drama, they're probably the most playful lovers I've ever written. And I didn't even plan it that way! It's always exciting and interesting to see how things work out and evolve. Somehow, my characters, even though they're most definitely my creations, always take on a life of their own. This is probably one of the things I like most about writing: you immerse yourself in a story until you're swept away by the flow of it. :O)

I'm not scary -- how depressing is that?

I took the test and all illusions about the Horror-Schwab (for teaching purposes, that is) are gone, destroyed, trampled to dust:

You Are Not Scary

Everyone loves you. Isn't that sweet?

How Scary Are You?

Some More Musings (please note the alliteration!): The Trouble with Cats

I share a flat with three cats. And since I'm the only one who leaves the flat on a regular basis, the cats spend more time there than I do. And I strongly suspect that as a consequence the cats think they graciously allow me to live with them instead of vice versa. So each evening, I have this fight with my oldest cat about who is allowed to sit on the swivel chair. I usually end up perching on the edge of that thing with my cat lying behind me and being miffed at having to share. You gotta love 'em! :O)

Musings on the First Day of Winter

Yes, indeed, winter has reached Germany. It's bitter cold today so I had to dug out the scarf and the gloves. A perfect day to spend sitting in front of the heater with a mug of hot cocoa and a good book. :)

No f, f, a (see? I told you: it's all due to the big pond in the backyard!) or h (hate h's -- especially when stepping onto/into one of them -- bah!). But I got an em! Things remain interesting, my dears.

Now I'm tottering off to see what I can do about that mug of cocoa. :O)

Happy Birthday, Tortoise Harriet!

Yesterday Tortoise Harriet celebrated her 175th birthday. In 1835 Charles Darwin took Harriet from the Galapagos islands to Britain, when she was just 5 years old (probably still a baby in turtle-terms). Harriet now lives in the zoo in Brisbane, Australia.

If you want to learn more about Harriet, click here.

(Oh, and perhaps somebody could tell me what the heck the difference is between a turtle and a tortoise.)

Today is the Day ...

... the Day of E-Mails from across the Big Pond. And I'm so excited as if it were Christmas. :O)

3:00 p.m. will see me glued to my 'puter, and I won't budge an inch except in cases of fire, floodding or aliens landing in our backyard.

Good Evening, Blogging World! :O)

Thanks to a change of plans, I was able to finish the proposal today (instead of tomorrow) and have already sent it off. I'm afraid the synopsis reads like something written by the Mad Hatter. (I've always been very, very bad at summarizing books. I'm even worse when it comes to my own stories.) I hope my three chapters (and Sebastian's charming freckles) will make up for it. :O)

So now I can flop down in front of the telly ...

... actually, I really should start using that wriggle-your-butt stepper again ...

... hmmm ...

Good Morning Blogging World!

My current amazon.co.uk sales rank is 5973. (Don't you think that's odd? I mean, wouldn't you have expected something like 5922 or 6004? And not exactly the same number again? Decidedly odd, if you ask me.)

I am to wrap up the third chapter of BEWITCHED over the weekend and hand it in as a proposal. So keep your fingers crossed for Amy & Sebastian! :O)

I'm bored

I conquered the mountain of dishes and polished my fridge and rearranged the fridge poetry. The dust wombats are still alive, the pile of laundry still lounging in my bedroom. No news from across the big pond yet. My amazon.co.uk sales rank is 5973.

The fridge poetry is a bit depressing because I've got only the "love poetry" set which means that there're lots of "stars", "sunshine", "yearning", "tears", "sorrow" and "love" -- and all resulting poems sound slightly sappy or cheesy. But since this was the only fridge poetry set I could get ... *shrug*

Here's one of these outbursts of genius on stainless steel:

goddess of love

entwined

with

moonlight and mystery

in all eternity

A Day for ... Doing Housework *sigh-sigh-sigh*

Yes, it's time again to prepare for battle with the dust wombats, attack the mountains of dishes beneath the sink, dive into the pile of laundry which needs to be folded, and seek a way through the paper jungle growing under my desk.

Do you think I'll hear from NY today?

PPS

Exactly ten years (and a day) ago Matthew Bourne's SWAN LAKE premiered at Sadler's Wells in London.

Some of you might already know that I simply adore this ballet: it's poignant and sexy, with the swans all danced by men (in white feather trousers and white-powdered torsos). Bourne's leather-clad and crop-swinging Stranger in Act III is a wonderful study, indeed almost a parody, of the alpha-male (women instantly succumb to his ... er ... charms and men behave like bunny rabbits around him). Act IV is so beautiful it brought tears to my eyes just to see the swans emerging from under the bed and through the walls. And I swear, even today I still cry buckets whenever I see the ending, the cruel killing of the Swan and the death of the prince.

Bourne's SWAN LAKE helped me to keep my sanity (haha!) in the time before my final oral exams. It's a show that makes laugh and makes cry, that makes me hold my breath and sigh in appreciation. In one word, it's wonderful! So ...

Happy anniversary, SWAN LAKE!

PS

No news yet from NY. :O(

No new diary up on adamcooper.com. :O(

Current sales rank at amazon.co.uk: 5288. Truly, I love amazon.co.uk. They never fail to give me a warm, fuzzy feeling. :O)

A Day for .... Marking Papers *sigh*

Today I'm good and continue marking my students' research papers. Just another 200 pages or so. Written in Times New Roman. Splendid. I dearly love researching and teaching, but correcting exams or papers I don't like at all. Especially when there are so many of them!

But in between papers, I'm sneaking in some time with Amy and Sebastian. :O) By now, my muse has quite overcome me: last night it woke me up and forced me to type another scene in my Alpha Smart. While I sat freezing in my bed. Have you ever tried to huddle beneath your duvet and keep your arms and shoulders warm while simultaneously typing? Haha!

All righty, the next paper beckons ...

The Thing About Big Maps That Dangle From Blackboards

Today was my first day of teaching in the new semester. It's always a bit daunting to step in front of a brandnew course, especially if said course consists of 47 people. (Yes, that's right. 47. At other places that's considered a lecture.)

The other bad thing about this course is that it starts with a geography lesson. Now, don't get me wrong: there are maps I actually adore. Like my printed-out-and-glued-together Greenwood's Map of London from 1827. Very lovely map this. But dangle a LARGE map from a blackboard and put me in front of it and I'm totally, irrevocably lost. Especially after stepping away from that blasted thing for a moment. Next thing I knew was me searching for the stupid Cambrian Mountains in central Wales -- and they had disappeared! No mountains on the map.

Crap.

Until somebody shouted from the back: "Wrong island!"

HOW EMBARRASSING IS THAT?????

It's not as if I couldn't normally distinguish between Wales and Ireland, oh no! (After all, I lived in the latter for eight wet, stormy months, thank you very much!) But standing in front of that map ... well, everything just sort of blurred to one big blob of land. I've always hated those big maps. Now you know why.

A WONDERFUL Day!!!!

Today when I arrived at uni, I found a parcel from the US in my pigeon hole: my first present from a reader! To say I was thrilled would be the understatement of the year! I was running around with the biggest smile ever for the rest of the day and probably got on everybody else's nerves because I just couldn't help telling everybody about my lovely present (two gorgeous bookmarks). :O) And I'm still totally excited and happy and can hardly believe this is all happening to me.

I'm such a lucky girl.

Sunday Musings

Not much time to smooch with the muse today. Instead I wrote an article on Holland House for the German romance magazine LoveLetter (http://www.loveletter-magazin.de/). They'll do a Regency special in December, so this is a nice opportunity to do some more promo for THE LILY BRAND. :O)

On Notebooks

I love notebooks. No, I'm positively addicted to notebooks! For years, I used to write my stories into notebooks of various sizes: big ones for the novels, smaller ones for poems and short stories. I celebrated the beginning of each new poem-&-short-story notebook by spending a lot of time choosing a motto or a poem (by somebody else) to go on the first page. And on the last few pages I always included a table of contents and yet another poem (again by somebody else).

I no longer write as much poems as I used to, and of course, I eventually (i.e. when I found out that typing 700 handwritten pages is rather boring indeed) started to type my novels into the 'puter straight away. So, no more excuses to buy notebooks.

But this morning, when the muse overcame me while I was feeding the kitties and I sat down on the kitchen chair and started to scribble on some loose paper, I thought how absolutely lovely it would be to have a notebook to accompany my novels. A notebook to jot down the synopsis and character drafts. To write outlines for later chapters. To take notes of research tidbits.

Since I was absolutely thrilled by the whole idea, I went into my study and rummaged through my "writing cupboard", where I keep all my old notebooks, my collection of (mostly German) rejection letters (but I've also got one signed by Marion Zimmer Bradley -- cool, isn't it?), and all the books from the 19th century I need for my research. Oh yes, and there is also a pile of yet unused, virginal notebooks. Unfortunately, none quite fitted the purpose I had in mind. So what should a girl do in this case? Of course: go out and buy a new notebook!

I found some really beautiful ones (by http://www.paperblanks.com/), which are made to resemble old books. Oooooh, so lovely!

So my muse and I are quite happy this evening! :O)

What I love ...

... are packages containing books! Today I got a package with THE LONDON ENCYCLOPEDIA, ed. by Ben Weinrebrand and Christopher Hibbert. Though we have the book at our university library, it's so much neater to have it here on my own bookshelf. :O)

Unfortunately, it seems I'm running out of bookshelf space.

Again.

After just one year of living in the new flat.

Duh.

Evening Chit-Chat

Today I wanted to be good and just write for about 2 hours before cleaning my flat. And mentally preparing myself for going back to teach next week.

Well ....

I took my Alpha Smart (the writing thingy, not the car ;-P ), sat down at my dining table just as the sun miracously peered out from behind the blanket of clouds, and started to write. And suddenly there was this slurping sound - tchurrrrrrrrrr - and just like that the story had sucked me up. And so I continued scribbling away for more or less the whole day. And was LUVVING it! *LOL*

I'm currently in the third chapter, which will mark the end of the exposition: unbeknown to the protagonists, evil will have raised its ghastly head to threaten their existence. At the moment though, I'm still working on the second meeting of Amy & Sebastian. I wanted to describe his attire a little, but when I was thumbing through my fashion books, I had to realize that most pictures are of women's dresses, and only few or none at all of male clothes. Gargh! So I had to improvise a little (a waistcoat shot with crimson probably wouldn't have looked that good with the red hair). So here's a little snippet with some male clothes:

"Don't tell me you're already bored, Miss Bourne?"
Her head snapped around. Blue-grey eyes regarded her intently beneath arched cinnamon brows.
Her own brows shot up in surprise. "Mr." -- Carrot. -- "Stapleton."
"Miss Bourne." He inclined his head and the candlelight ran a fiery path over his hair. When he straightened, she noticed how his dark brown coat accentuated the breadth of his shoulders. A golden floral pattern gleamed on the black waistcoat beneath.
Very stylish.

I GOT MAIL!!!!!

Hooray! My agent e-mailed me to say that a) I understood the option clause in my last contract correctly, and b) that she's halfway through the ms and loving it! LOVING it!!!! And now I'm sitting in front of my 'puter and am bawling my eyes out because of sheer relief.

Now how am I supposed to sleep tonight?

This & that

In the wee hours of Monday morning I had a blast at Witchy's Halloween Masquerade over at the Mystic Castle. It was a chat and everybody came in disguise; whenever an author entered, the people present could ask her questions and whoever revealed the author's identity, got a prize. I came as Buffy the Vampire Slayer. :) Unfortunately I could only stay for about half an hour, because I was so tired I was about to fall face first onto my keyboard. But --- oh, what fun it was!

Remember about the chat I had in September? The transcript is now available at http://www.themysticcastle.com : Just go to the Authors' Nook and search for the transcripts. -- Enjoy!