Revisions Part 2: Knife or No Knife?

Today I tried to figure out what I want to do with the ending of WOLFENBACH. Remember the scene I mentioned a few weeks ago? The one where the heroine grabs a knife to threaten the semi-villain of the piece? That one hit the floor before I handed the ms in, but now I'm thinking about putting it in again. What do you think? Can a nice romance heroine grab a knife and hold it to somebody else's throat?

As if in a dream, Cissy turned and spotted the big knife lying on Cook's kitchen table. Very slowly she reached out. Her fingers closed around the handle, so cool against her hot skin. And the next moment the razor sharp edge of the knife rested against the vulnerable flesh of XY's throat. XY lost all remaining color, turned ashen grey, with the eyes bulging out.

"Now what exactly did ZZ promise you?" Cissy said, still in that calm, calm voice, which seemed to come from very far away. Somehow, it didn't seem to be her voice at all.

The air whistled through XY's nose.

Cissy pressed the knife a little tighter against the skin. "Talk." A drop of blood appeared where the edge had nipped the skin. It ran into the hollow at the base of XY's throat. For the blink of an eye, it hung there, red and glittering, like an exotic gemstone, before it slipped down and was soaked up by the neckline of XY's clothes. [Okay, clothes doesn't really fit in here, but I can't really tell you whether XY is wearing a shirt or a dress, can I?]

So what do you think? Leave it in or throw it out?

The 100th Post: We're International! :O)

You might have noticed that itty-bitty button at the very bottom of this page? Well, this is my brandnew statistics tracker (which I actually managed to built into this site!) (okay, okay, so it was baby-easy, but still, who would've thought that becoming a romance writer would slowly turn me into a computer geek?) (okay, okay, we're not there yet. But just wait and see and the next thing you'll know is that my website has been transformed into a multi-media, audio-video sensation *g*). Back to that statistics tracker: to my utter, utter delight it also shows me which country you're coming from.

So imagine my utter delight when I found out that

A) there are actually more than three people reading this blog and I'm not just writing into black cyberspace (yay!)

and

B) we're truly international!

For there aren't just the usual suspects visiting (a big hello to everybody from the US, Australia, UK, and Germany!), but also people from more exotic places (well, at least exotic from my point of view): Hello to everybody from Iceland, Signapore, Italy, Portugal, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, India & Azerbaijan! I hope you all like my little corner of the cyberworld and will continue dropping by from time to time. :O)

A Post-Christmas Christmas Present

I've just found out that THE LILY BRAND is nominated for a RT Reviewers' Choice Award in the category First Historical Romance.

I'm sooooo thrilled!!!!

The Christmasy Contest is now closed

And I've decided to fill not one cyber-stocking, but three. So, Carolin, Julie & Carolyn, I'll make Santa, the Christkind or the Weihnachtsmann (whatever you prefer) do another tour just for you. I hope you'll enjoy your belated Christmas present. :O)

Revisions Part 1

I'm going to spend next week revising THE CASTLE OF WOLFENBACH. My agent gave me two tasks: A) to rewrite the ending and B) to cut the journey to Wolfenbach short. So, as you can see, revisions involve the dreaded c-word: cutting. Argh! Cutting is always necessary of course; it tightens the web of story, gets rid of excess baggage and makes the whole novel sparkle.

Unfortunately, I'm really, really bad at it. :-/

And to cut the journey to Wolfenbach short ... What to leave in? What to cut? Surely not the Mouse Tower episode which introduces the formidable Widow Chisholm, who's going to invoke terror in the hearts of Wolfenbach's rats and its owner (i.e., the hero) alike? Surely not the terrible snowstorm, which bodes evil for the future of my poor heroine? Surely not the episode in the inn in Kirchwalden, where Cissy learns that her intended is considered as dangerous as a wild beast and likely to rip her apart should she be so foolish as to darken his doorstep? And most definitely not the panorama of the Rhine-Main-area, a lovely intertextual reference to Anna Seghers's THE SEVENTH CROSS!

A few years ago I helped with the preparations of the new critical edition of THE SEVENTH CROSS and had to read the novel five times within a month (no need to mention, is there, that afterwards I knew the thing by heart -- including all the differences between the first edition, printed in Mexico, and the old Parisian manuscript, which Seghers had to abandon when the German troops reached Paris and which then found its way into an archive in Berlin where it lay forgotten for the next several years). Despite Seghers's obvious problem with names (e.g., nearly all of the female characters are called Elisabeth), the novel is a brilliant study of society in Nazi Germany and tells the story of seven men who manage to flee from a concentration camp. Six of them either die or are hunted down, but with the help of old friends and perfect strangers, the seventh indeed manages to slip through the net of the Hitler regime. What I find particular interesting about the novel is that it is set in the area between Frankfurt and Mainz, i.e., where I live and work. So in WOLFENBACH I included a reference to her wonderful panoramas of this part of the country and of its history:

Their ship glided on, and Cissy admired the hills where once the fires of Celtic altars had illuminated the night, where the Romans had erected the Limes and made these hills the rim of the civilized world. They had brought the knowledge of cultivating wine, and still the grapes ripened along the banks of the river. Countless armies had marched through this land, peoples had come and mingled and disappeared, and still their legacy lived on, strong and insistent, and Cissy admired it all, the ding of the steamship in her ears.

And after having to read THE SEVENTH CROSS five times within a month, I absolutely refuse to cut this snippet from my novel! :O)

So the problem remains: what the heck shall I cut out? *sigh*

So this was Christmas ...

In Germany, we celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve, i.e. that's the day for the big family celebration and for exchanging presents. Traditionally, one room (usually the sitting room aka die gute Stube = "the good room", used only on special occasions) was used as the "Christmas room" where the parents would set up the Christmas tree and put the presents under the tree. Children weren't allowed to go into the room before Christmas Eve -- though, of course, they tried to take a sneak peek through the keyhole. But this, as I've been told myself, is very dangerous indeed, for if you peek through the keyhole while the Christkind ("Christ Child")* brings the presents, you'll get angel dust in the eye and will be blind forevermore. But if you're a nice girl or boy and wait outside the room until a little bell sounds to announce the Christkind has been there and you may now enter the room, then all the wonders of Christmas will await you behind that door.

*Ever since the 19th century either the Christkind (Catholic) or the Weihnachtsmann (Protestant) has been bringing the Christmas presents to German children.

Christmasy Contest

To put us all in a proper mood for the holiday season, I've decided to hold a wee Christmas contest that will run until 25 Dec 05. All you need to do is to send me an e-mail with "Christmas Contest" in the header. The winner will be picked at random from all entries (double entries will be deleted) and will get his or her cyberstocking filled with my special Christmas CD 2005.

The e-mail addy is: SandyMSchwabATaol.com (just replace the AT with @)

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas ...

... actually not. Here in Frankfurt, Germany, it looks very much like the middle of November: a dreary, cold, grey day. But hey, they promised us snow for the 26th! Besides, what are Christmas songs for if not to put you in a proper Christmasy mood? So I started the day listening to a Christmas CD some friends of mine produced privately last year: "Hark! The Second Noel" by the Duo con Paso. Luv it! :O)

Anyway, I wish you all a merry Christmas, or, if you don't celebrate Christmas, happy holidays, or, if you live in a country where you don't celebrate anything this weekend, then I wish you at least a good weekend! Take care all of you!

The Pitfalls of Christmas

How to reduce the normal pre-Christmas stress? Well, I've had the clever idea -- since I haven't had time for homemade cookies -- to buy a package of dough at the supermarket so that I would at least bake the cookies myself. Sounds like a good plan? Well, I spent the afternoon cutting out cookies, shoving four backing-tray loads of cookies into the oven, and then decorating the cookies. The cookie-decoration ended up looking rather brilliant and professional and wonderful (if I may say so).

BUT ...

... the cookies themselves taste like crap.

So now my kitchen is filled with the usual cookie-baking smell that always makes me feel sick after a while, my tee-shirt is stenched with the cookie-baking scent, and I've got four baking-tray loads of cookies that look brilliant but don't taste it.

Oh yes, and I wasted a whole afternoon for a useless cookie-baking-spree.

Somebody please hit me over the head.

My Muse Is Now Officially Homeless

It was by now means an easy decision to leave my current publisher, especially since I very much enjoyed working with Chris K, who's a wonderful editor indeed. Still, in January my agent will start looking for a new home for the Muse. Unfortunately, this means that it'll take some time until my next book is out.

For Your Entertainment On This Sunday Morning

My favourite Old English riddle (in my own translation). Enjoy!

A creature came along where men sat,

many in an assembly, wise in spirit;

it had one eye and two ears

and two feet, twelve hundred of heads,

a back and a belly and two hands,

arms and shoulders, one neck

and two sides. Tell me what I am called.

Who Says Renaissance Poetry Isn't Hot?

If you think old literature is stuffy and boring, they must have made you read the wrong stuff at school. Some Old English riddles are funny enough to make you laugh out aloud, some Middle English romances are touching enough to bring tears to your eyes, and some Renaissance poems are just too beautiful for words. And sexy, too! (Who would've thought it, er? *g*)

The following is from a poem I found in THE LYMOND POETRY (my copy arrived earlier today, hooray!): "A la fontaine je voudrais" by Jean-Antoine de Baif (1532-89) (the translation is mine and hopefully mostly correct)

A la fontaine je voudrais

Avec ma belle aller jouer.

Là dedans l'eau nous irions tous deux rafraîchir

Notre amour trop ardent.

Mille douceurs, mille bons mots, mille plaisirs

Mille gentils amoureux jeux se feraient là,

Mille baisers, mille doux embraseements là nous nous donn'rions.

~*~

To the fountain I want

to go with my sweet to play.

There in the water the two of us will slake

Our too ardent love.

A thousand sweetnesses, a thousand witty words, a thousand pleasures,

A thousand lovely love games we will play there,

A thousand kisses, a thousand sweet embraces we will give each other there.

Be still my heart ...

Greatest and most brilliant fictional hero of all times?

Hands down, Francis Crawford of Lymond.

As Julia Ross put it quite nicely and aptly in the dedication of her THE SEDUCTION: "Lymond will remain forever unequalled."

Reading Dunnett's The Lymond Chronicles made me discover my love for late medieval poetry; and most of the times thinking of "Tant que je vive" is enough to bring tears to my eyes. So you can imagine my utter delight when just now I discovered that there's an anthology THE LYMOND POETRY. Oooooh, what joy!

DONE!!!!!

After several hours of further battle with the 'puter, the deed is finally done: the remodelled website is online! Yeah!

Please have a look and let me know what you think: http://www.sandraschwab.com

Remodelling the Website -- Doing Battle with the 'Puter

Tonight (quite literally at night, in fact) I've been overhauling my website:

1) I've repaired the German pages the homepage-building-for-dummies programme ripped apart a few weeks ago

2) I've replaced all the png-files on my English website with jpg-files; so hopefully, the pages won't take so long to load anymore

3) I've replaced the seasonal poetry with fridge poetry to heighten the general entertainment factor *g* (besides, I always forgot to update the seasonal poetry page, which is a bit embarrassing -- I mean, in my lyrical world it's still spring ... *cough*)

4) I've restructured the English pages

5) and only a few minutes ago, I found out how to make a picture a link

Now I just need to update the news-section, think of a new contest, and then haul the whole thing online. Yeah!

Some more things I'm thinking of adding in the next few weeks and months: a page for writers with articles about writing, something about doing research plus a few research-book recommendations. Anything else you think should be added to my website? Let me know!

And now I'm finally going to bed! Good night! :O)

And they seriously tell us romance is trash????

If you belong to those people who think romance authors produce bad prose, especially when it comes to love scenes, well then, read the following sex scenes by oh-so-wonderful mainstream authors and ... shudder, shriek, and run away (and probably be afraid, too) (very afraid!):

"His was that her cunt did not feel like Phyllis's. Smoother, somehow simpler, its wetness less thick, less of a sauce, more of a glaze." (from VILLAGES by John Updike)

How yucky is that, I ask you? The next one is more ridiculous than yucky:

"In reply, Boonyi pulled her phiran and shirt off over her head and stood before him naked except for the little pot of fire hanging low, below her belly, heating further what was already hot. " (from SHALIMAR THE CLOWN by Salman Rushdie)

And this one is bound to give you nightmares:

". . . and the suddenness of it, the snaking of her tongue, the pressure of her lips, the hot grip of her mouth, triggered his orgasm, which was not juice at all but a demon eel thrashing in his loins and swimming swiftly up his cock, one whole creature of live slime fighting the stiffness as it rose and bulged at the tip and darted into her mouth." (from BLINDING LIGHT by Paul Theroux)

Further gems can be found here , all of them on the longlist of the Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction award.

My Five Minutes of Fame

Today the Chronicles of Narnia opened in German cinemas -- and SWR1, a German radio station, did a phone interview with me about C.S. Lewis and his Chronicles of Narnia. Apparently, the SWR1 people wanted to give their listeners some background info about the film as Lewis's books aren't that well known in Germany. So they phoned the British Studies at the university of Mainz in order to find somebody who might know something about author and book. This in turn resulted in a bit of panic at our department, because none of the people present had read the Chronicles or wanted to be interviewed. Our secretary then called me -- and thus cleared the way to my five minutes of fame. I had a vague idea what THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE is about and could tell them amusing things about the Inklings: that they met on Tuesday mornings at the Eagle and the Child (nicknamed "The Bird and the Babe") in Oxford and on Thursday evenings in Lewis's sitting room at Magadalen College (pronounced Maudlin).

That interview probably changed the history of radio forevermore. *g*

Sunday Night Ramblings

I didn't get much writing done this week. The job at uni and other things (e.g., Christmas cards -- ack!) needed my full attention. Duh.

Why are those weeks before Christmas always so stressful????