Rabid Fan

... that's me. For today I've got Mary Stewart's THE WIND OFF THE SMALL ISLES. As I've never read anything by Mary Stewart, you can easily guess that I didn't buy this book because of Mary Stewart. NO. I bought this book because it once belonged to Dorothy Dunnett. And in 1974 she gave it to Helen McGregor. And together with the book I got a letter from Dorothy Dunnett to her friend Helen. That's why I bought this book. :O)

And then ...

.... they kissed! :O)

Her eyes softened. "Then let me show you how much I mind." With that she rose on tiptoe, her free hand sneaking around his neck to draw his head down, and her lips touched his, sweetly, innocently.

The spark that ignited the fire.

His arms closed around her, hauled her against him, tighter, tighter, so tight their bodies would melt and become one. His hand buried in her hair, he opened his mouth and, not so sweetly, not so innocently, deepened the kiss, tasted her, devoured her.

And she --

-- let him.

Sunday Output

This morning Muse woke up for a little while, so I could continue working on my love-test scene. I'm having a bit of a problem at the moment, though, because the characters' feelings for each other are meant to be somewhat over the top and artificial at the moment. Finding the proper balance so they don't come across as totally silly, is difficult. Hmm ....

Other output included an article ("Writing the Romance") for our departmental student magazine. I'm not quite sure whether that one is interesting or funny enough. Another hmmm ...

Hibernating Muse

These days my Muse is apparently hibernating. So I'm concentrating on my PhD project because muses aren't really needed for that. In the past few days I learnt that romance is not just a patriarchal conspiracy, but also a capitalist conspiracy, out to get the liberated woman and force her back into proper subservience (I wish somebody would have told that to the lady with the sturdy boots in WOLFENBACH!!!).

At the moment, however, I'm reading a wonderful study on romance for a change: Juliet Flesch's FROM AUSTRALIA WITH LOVE, which focusses on Mills&Boon novels written by Australian authors. I had several revelations today; e.g., I didn't know that Emma Darcy is a pseudonym and that up to 1995 it represented a husband-wife author team. I also wasn't aware that biographical details given in Harlequin/M&B novels might be in parts fake. (Yup, I'm a little bit naïve in these matters.)

Creative-writing-wise, I sketched a little love-test scene from later in the book last night. I hope Muse wakes up again, soon!

Belated Burns-Day Post

As I didn't manage to do a special post in honour of Robbie Burns yesterday, I'm going to make up for it with posting a romantic Burns-moment from the very first novel I ever wrote in English -- Highland Love, which some of you might still remember. So follow me to the Highlands of Scotland and meet Kathy and Rory (I left the text just as I wrote it back in 2000, though I would do the scene a bit differently today :O) ):

Rory gave her a happy grin and drew her down to sit beside him on the stone. "That's my very own Story Stone," he told her. "My grandfather used to take me here and tell me stories."

"Hmhm." The stone was cold, and Kathy snuggled nearer against him and the warmth of his body. "What kind of stories?"

"All kinds of stories. About our clan, of course. How the MacDonalds came from the Summer Isles. How Flora MacDonald saved Bonnie Prince Charlie after Culloden."

"Of course." She wrinkled her nose. "She should have let him drown, if you ask me. For being such a sorry military leader."

He clicked his tongue and whacked his finger at her. "Don't you speak like that about Charles Edward Stuart," he said with mock seriousness. "After all, my Granddad was quite fond of him."

"Oh, I'm so sorry. It won't happen again, I assure you."

"I certainly hope so." He gave her what was supposed to be a stern glance, but all he achieved by it was making Kathy giggle.

"What else did your grandfather tell you?" she asked.

"Fairy tales and folk tales. And he also taught me some of Robbie Burns' poems."

At that she seemed to be surprised. "Robert Burns? But he was a lowlander!"

"Certainly." Rory laughed. "In Granddad's opinion he was the best lowlander to have ever lived. Burns was quite in favour of the Stuart cause, you know: 'Come weal, come woe, we'll gather and go, / And live or die with Charlie.' "

"I see." Kathy looked around, and a sweet smile blossomed on her face. "This is a beautiful spot, Rory." She looked up at him. "Thank you for bringing me here."

"It was my pleasure, my lady," he drawled and took her hand to plant a kiss on its back. But when he glanced at her over the rim of her knuckles, he suddenly felt something inside him tighten, and he was reminded of Robbie Burns once more. Only this time, it was a completely different Burns:

Fair tho' she be, that was ne'er my undoing:

'Twas the dear smile when naebody did mind us,

'Twas the bewitching, sweet, stown glance o' kindness.

Argh!

Horrible things happened to the layout of my blog, and I don't know how to fix it. *sniff*

I'm also starting to wonder whether I speak Chinese in the classroom without noticing ... Or perhaps Betelgeusian?

The Lily Brand an AAR Buried Treasure

AAR's At the Back Fence named TLB as one of the buried treasures of 2005, and there're some really nice comments in both the AtBF issue as well as on the AtBF message board:

Lynn liked Schwab's book because the tone was unique and "captured the redemptive power of love so well."

and

This was another book that felt different and original. I think my favorite thing about this one was that Schwab wasn't afraid to go to some really dark places -- I'm not referring to the actual torture the hero and heroine endured, but rather to its psychological aftermath. I thought that she did an excellent job of showing how the heroine blamed herself for what happpened to the hero, and how she isolated herself and did not open up to anyone about what she was going through. I also really liked the secondary characters of the hero's gay friends. How nice to come across gay characters that weren't villainous for a change! And I liked all the little allusions to fairy tales and the Grimm's fairy tales atmosphere.

These people really know how to put a smile on a girl's face. :O)

A Romantic Moment in front of the British Museum

Stapleton was the last to alight from the carriage. The sunlight made his hair glint like molten copper -- a sight which distracted Amy from admiring the stately building. She just couldn't help smiling at him. Oh, he was do dear to her!

His lips curving, he went to her and offered her his arm. Amy slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow, and shivered a little when her arm brushed his side. "What a beautiful house," she said quickly.

"Oh yes, enormous, isn't it?" He cast a look around the forecourt before he looked down at her, one eyebrow raised. "Just as enormous as the debts Montagu incurred because of it. For how desperate must a man be to marry a madwoman?"

"A madwoman?" She held her breath, as always enchanted with his stories. His cheek dimpled, and she wished she could reach up and put her finger there. Or even her lips ... A blush warmed her face.

(Excerpt from BEWITCHED by Sandra Schwab. Copyright 2005/2006. All Rights Reserved.)

More from the Fish Heroine

Today we had to drag yet another fish out of the pond. Unfortunately it was one of our biggest. Which meant we needed to transport him in a dirty clothes basket. After he had moved into the bathtub, I spent the next five hours sitting on the lid of the toilet watching the fish, while my Mum drove off to get another air-bubbly-thingy, a net, and a paddling pool. No luck with the paddling pool, though. And at about 2:00 p.m. the fishy keeled over. We called the fish doctor and hope he'll be able to do something for the poor thing.

And the weather forecast has promised even more cold weather for the weekend. AAAAAARGH!!!!

The Surprises of Book Parcels

Ordering at abebooks can be lots of fun -- and in my case, usually ends in a major shopping spree. Today I got another bunch of parcels with books from my latest order, and it turned out that ordering at abebooks isn't just lots of fun, but can also be somewhat tricky because most of the time you don't really know what the book is all about. Of course, you can guess from the title, but sometimes titles can be very, very, VERY misleading. All books from that latest order date back to the early 19th century and have something to do with London -- or so I thought. One of the books is called THE ILLUSTRATED LONDON INSTRUCTOR. "Hooray," I thought, "a guidebook of London!"

Which turned out to be ...

... slightly ...

... wrong.

"The design of the following Work," the preface of THE ILLUSTRATED LONDON INSTRUCTOR tells us, "has been to present the young Student of the graceful, admirable, and in our time most necessary art of Elocution, with selections from the best ancient and modern authors in every branch of English composition, most fitted for the purpose of eliciting and strengthening the powers of reading and speaking."

(Ah. Jetzt. Ja. -- Eine Insel!)

The world is full of surprises. :O)

Fish-in-Freezing-Distress Saved by Damsel-with-Dripping-Net

Today my Mum and I saved two of my Dad's kois from dying from the cold. I'm fast becoming an expert on fishing a fish out from under the ice, putting it into a bucket full of water and then carrying it into the cellar to the brandnew winter basins.

Now I just have to figure out how I can build saving fish into a novel. :O)

On reviews

If you read romance boards or blogs, you'll know that at the moment the romance community is aflutter due to an incident involving a negative amazon review and an author's reaction to it. This incident raised two main questions:

a) How serious should you take an amazon review?

b) Does an author have the (moral) right to get a review taken off or pushed off her amazon page?

Several issues that came up during this debate reminded me a lot of my own rather naive view of reviews, in particular amazon reviews, about a year ago. I mean, I wasn't even aware that people really read these reviews (I normally don't read reviews)! So imagine my surprise when I found out that these reviews can be made into a really big issue – and my sheer horror when I realized that everybody can post a review of my book or even trash it. And all I can do about it is –

– nothing. (Or almost nothing.)

Wow, that's ... Could I please have my manuscript back?

Reviews are scary. Amazon reviews are even scarier because there are indeed people out there who enjoy trashing books in general or trashing books by a particular author/publisher. (This, however, was apparently not the case in the aforementioned incident.) Plain trashing is easy to spot: the reviews are very short and read something like: "THIS BOOK IS FEMINIST CRAP."/ "This iS the wost book I evver read. I didn't even mak it past page 15." In the worst possible case, the review includes a personal attack on the author. ("The only books author XY should be allowed to write are picture books!") Now, IMO, it's perfectly all right if an author asks amazon to remove such "reviews" and to ask friends to click the "not helpful" button.

So much about reviews. But even scarier still are discussions on message boards and blogs. With THE LILY BRAND, I was really lucky that most people seemed to like the book. However, there were some negative comments, too. In one case even on a board where I am a regular poster, and in a way that very much looked like a personal attack to me (if you post about seven comments in three months, and at least three of these comments are about how horrid TLB is – well, what else would you call it than a personal attack?). Now what do you do in these cases?

Again, nothing.

And believe me, it's not a nice feeling. I'm usually a person who isn't afraid to stand up for herself, but in this case I'm supposed to accept the slaps gracefully and even with a smile. Duh. (Okay, in one case I probably didn't react quite so gracefully ... ah, well ... *shrug*) All in all, it makes you feel rather helpless because you know you'll be judged by your reaction. Therefore, very often you can't react in what you yourself would regard an adequate manner.

BUT, as I said, I was very, very lucky with TLB. In fact I've found some wonderful in-depth discussions of the novel on one or two boards, got lots of lovely e-mails and even a present (!!!)from enthusiastic readers, and was spontaneously hugged by a bookseller in Reno because she had enjoyed my book so much. :O)

So all in all, I really can't complain.

Still, the prospect of reviews and readers' discussions can be rather scary.

My PhD-Project-Day

I spent my PhD-Project-Day reading another rather ghastly academic study (a German one) on popular romance. *sigh* Sometimes you get the impression that the people who write that stuff have absolutely no clue in regard to the creative process of writing, the publishing business, or reading. Argh! Argh! Argh! However, IMO, the crowning glory still is the nonsense Radway sprouts in READING THE ROMANCE. How about:

"That the problem might be even more complicated than we think is suggested by Kirkland's discovery that most of the women in the group of romance writers she studied had been avid readers before they tried their hand at romance writing." (Profound, isn't it?)

More lovely still:

"To find a way to provide such support [i.e., the support of us feminist critics to guide them towards the light of feminism], however, or alternatively to learn from romance writers and readers is not easy for we lack the space and channels for integrating our practices with theirs [sounds as if we poor romance writers have succumbed to some strange cult]. Our segregation by class, occupation, and race, once again, works against us." [???]

Let me quote Dunnett: "I spit, I spit, I spit."

Duh.

Booklover Conference 2006 in Wiesbaden

At the end of April German romance fans will once again flock to the hotel "Schwarzer Bock" in Wiesbaden to attend the 2006 Booklover Conference -- the only romance conference in Europe. And since Wiesbaden is just around the corner from where I live (okay, okay, not literally around the corner) -- guess who's going to attend! :O)

The focus of this year's conference is on paranormals, thus one of the special guests will be Sherrilyn Kenyon -- how cool is that?

Now, as to your bumbling newbie authoress extraordinaire, she is going to give a workshop on researching a historical novel ("Auf den Spuren der Vergangenheit") and to moderate a reading as well as the big, bilingual end-of-conference discussion. So it looks as if things are going to be great fun indeed! (And, if you're so inclined, you can stalk poor, hapless male models, too ... *g*)

Preparing for a Visit to the Museum

In Chapter 4 my hero & heroine will visit the British Museum (where ladies apparently fainted on a regular basis when seeing the Elgin Marbles) (Argh! Argh! Full frontal nudity!) (Amy will NOT faint. She grew up with a bunch of male cousins, after all.) So I spent the past few hours researching the history of the British Museum, displays, admission, etc.

In 1817 the museum was housed in the old Montagu House, which was later demolished to make room for the new old building. The collections were open for only a few hours per day, and before 1808 you had to write a letter to the curators first in order to be granted a ticket (thus admission could be nicely restricted to the more "deserving" classes). Apparently there were guided tours, but only 15 people per tour and hour were allowed. The restrictions regulating admission were relaxed after 1808, but in how far, I haven't yet found out. Still, I think it's time for Amy to take her bonnet and head towards Russell Street.

P.S.

Speaking of Cavaliers and Roundheads: one of the first Civil War battlefields -- Edgehill -- is mentioned in the prologue of BEWITCHED. :O)

Today I let myself be Bewitched

After several weeks of organizing some Christmas promo and revising Wolfenbach and NOT working on BEWITCHED, I found it quite hard to come back and take up the story again today. But I hope the creative juices will soon flow freely again. :O)

I've found the AlphaSmart very helpful in situations like this one because you can't really tell how much you've written. And because you only see four lines of the text at a time, you're not tempted to go back and start revising what you've already written. Thus, it's much easier to lose yourself in the process of writing.

Yay to AlphaSmarts!

The Horror Schwab in Action

Just in case some of my students do indeed read this blog: here's a picture prompt for you. *g* Historical context of the above pic? And of course, everybody else is also invited to cast a vote. Have fun!

Yes to the Knife

Both the proposal and the manuscript revisions are now finished (Yay! Please feel free to throw confetti and glitter!), and I've decided to leave the knife in because this way the ending nicely refers back to the first meeting of the protagonists: the heroine thinks all that's needed to make him the hero in a gothic novel, is a blood-dripping knife. But in the end, it's her who's holding the blood-dripping knife. Cheekly subversive, isn't it? *g*

The First of the Year

Happy new year, everybody! Here's to a wonderful 2006!