Proofreading BEWITCHED

I'm currently proofreading Bewitched in order to get it ready for re-publication - and I'm falling in love with Fox and Amy all over again. :-) Here's Amy, not at all happy with the balls in London:*

"Puh." Clutching her glass of lemonade like a deadly weapon, Amy flopped down on a chair at the edge of the dancing floor, where the gossiping matrons and unfortunate wallflowers had gathered.

Being a wallflower sounded awfully good at the moment. She grimaced and wriggled her aching toes. Every blasted man younger than seventy at this blasted ball had wanted to dance with her at least once. They had given her foolish smiles, had talked to her in avuncular tones while leering at her bossom, and -- to make matters worse -- some of them had actually stepped on her toes. One hundred and eighty pounds of solid male stepping on one's toes while they were ensheathed in only the lightest satin slipper could by no means be regarded as amusing.

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* I have to admit that I'm guilty of letting the trauma of the dancing lessons I had when I was seventeen or thereabouts influence my heroines' enjoyment of balls. It is most unfair, I know.  But what can I do? *shrugs*

Further Preparations for the LLC

Like last year, I'm going to take a sketchbook to the LoveLetter Convention 2013. And while I love my trusty, small watercolour box, I have an even smaller box that would be just perfect for travelling but came with only six colours. Here's a page from last year's sketchbook that shows you how very small both boxes are (Moleskine sketchbook in A5; the boxes are depicted in life size).

Trusty, everyday box at the top & super-duper mini box at the bottom

Aren't they cute? The mini box came with a foldable brush that slids into a compartment in the lid of the box. But as you can see, the selection of colours is indeed a problem. I mean, Viridian Hue, hu? That's NOT a very nice green!!!

What's a girl to do?

Easy: buy some Blu Tack and start hacking the box. Because without the plastic tray and the plastic holders for the little half pans, you can squeeze 14 (FOURTEEN!!!!) half pans into that box. Not bad, eh? So I got a few empty half pans and a few tubes of cheap paint (with two or three indulgences thrown in) (I LOVE the names of watercolours - they're so evocative, and I find it very hard to resist a pretty name. I mean, Turner Yellow? Isn't that a lovely name?). And the hacking commenced:

(I had to cut the empty pans to size because they were a bit too deep to properly fit into the box - hence the plastic scraps in the upper right corner in the sketch above). After a bit of fiddling around with colours and meditating over the selection I got, I finally ended up with this nice little box:

I love the sap green in this palette and the brown called Terra Pozzuli (another of these pretty names!): it's a very earthy colour. I also love Turner Yellow, even though it smells funny.

But then, I bet it doesn't smell even half as funny as the 19th-century watercolour paint called Indian Yellow that was supposedly made from the concentrated urine of cows that had been fed only with mango-leaves and had been given very little water. THAT yellow apparently had a very ... uhm ... pungent scent indeed. :-)

Preps for the LoveLetter Convention

Last year's LLC was such a blast, and so it's little wonder that I'm counting the days until this year's big event. The conference also offers a good excuse to design some new bookmarks for the new, soon-to-be-released editions of my old novels*. Of course, I had to start with Castle of the Wolf - after all, there's a dishy man in blue to drool over:

I ordered a few test prints yesterday, and I can't wait to see how they turn out.
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* I finally figured out a comparatively quick way how to get clean copies of the published novels (or at least clean copies of Castle and Bewitched). I still need to make a few minor changes to both books and clean up a few spelling mistakes that made it into the published versions.

Cover Reveal!

And here it is: the preliminary cover (or rather, three slightly different versions of the cover) for the brandnew novel! What do you think? Which do you like best? (Updated to add: The edge of the lower part of the cover is different in each picture. *g*)

Springtime Pleasures will be the first in a series of four books: "A Love for Every Season" will follow the adventures of four young women who become fast friends in the course of a year. The men they meet are all strong and stubborn, and most unlikely partners for our heroines - or are they?

Names, names, names

Yesterday afternoon I had another of those pesky panic attacks, so I dived into my (very battered) 1833 copy of Debrett's Peerage. I found a pressed clover, various notes in ink (reminded me of Sir Walter Elliott editing his family's entry in the baronetage in Austen's Persuasion), and a very good reason why upper-class men addressed one another by their last names or titles: they were all called John, Henry, Edward, John Henry, Henry Edward, George, Robert, George Augustus, George Edward, William, John William, John Edward William, James, James Edward, George John, Thomas, Thomas George, Richard, John Richard, Thomas William, etc. If you had walked into White's and called "John", at least ten men would have turned their heads. Not very useful.

There are a few variations to these names as some families used the mother's maiden name as their heir's first name. Thus Austen's Mr. Darcy is called Fitzwilliam Darcy (we also learn that his cousin is Colonel Fitzwilliam, so Fitzwilliam is obviously the family name of the Earl of ---, Darcy's uncle). But judging from my copy of Debrett's, it would appear the practice wasn't that widespread.

You can also find some really fanciful names, like Sir Launcelot Lake (I kid you not). Incidentally, Sir Launcelot named his son after his wife's family title: she was the daughter of the Earl of Warwick, so the son was called Warwick Lake. His son was Launcelot-Charles Lake, then followed a few Gerards, then finally Francis-Gerard Lake, the present [i.e. in 1833] Viscount Lake. (He is also Baron Lake.)

Even though I found quite a few George Augustus Fredericks listed in Debrett's, I decided to re-name the hero of the brandnew novel because I realised that quite a few people I know have young sons called Frederick. So a romance hero called Frederick would have been ... eh ... weird.

I thought about replacing Frederick with Fenton, his mother's family name, until I realised that it would have been his elder brother who would have been given that name.

So, scratch Fenton.

In the end, Griff became a mere George Augustus. I daresay the loss of a Christian name won't bother him too much given his overall problems. (Note to self: Give all your heroes LOTS of problems so they won't be bothered when you rename them.)

His very large cousin, by contrast, got the Fenton name: he is George Fenton Cole.

His other cousin is Edward Fenton, Baron Anson (or, Ed the Snake). (Though you won't see much of Ed the Snake in Book No. 1)

As you can see, naming one's characters is a tricky business, especially when you want to stay true to the time your story is set in. :-)

3 Facts about the Brandnew Novel

1. Charlie not only wears spectacles, but she is also very tall.
2. This is considered a sad affliction by her aunt.
3. Charlie considers footmen far more distressing:

"I am too tall." She frowned, pausing for a moment. "Or perhaps the gentlemen are simply too short, whatever it is. I could live with that, I assure you, but the footmen!" She sighed, shaking her head.

"The footmen?" Mrs XY [poor woman, she doesn't have a name yet] echoed, her brows raised.

"Yes. In London one cannot go out on one's own, but is obliged to take one of them. Truly, for the life of me I cannot see what for, as they are not even armed."

"Armed?" Mrs XY's brows climbed even higher.

Charlie eyed her speculatively. Perhaps, having been out of the country for so long, Mrs. XY didn't yet know the extent of the moral depravity to be found in England.

 Confidently, Charlie leaned towards her. "On account of the highwaymen."

Yes, you guessed right: 3 facts about the aforementioned brandnew novel

1. Carlotta feels very deeply for people who have got problems and she normally feels obliged to help them (mean-spirited people refer to this habit as meddling, which is completely untrue and utterly unfair).
2. Griff has a problem. A big problem. (Remember that he has problems with his papa? His Big Problem is connected to that.) Griff himself doesn't think he has a problem.
3. Nevertheless, Charlie is determined to help him with his Big Problem, for one simply cannot have people of one's acquaintance fall into a sad melancholia!

Miss Carlotta Stanton to Lady Isabella Griffin, by two-penny post

My dear Lady Isabella,

I hope this letter finds you well. Your brother has just called on us & I am positive that the lines on his face were harsher than 3 days hence. He looks positively haggard. I am convinced  that we ought to take Some Kind of Action to cure him of his Sad Melancholia. Indeed, dire measures are called for. Do you think it will cure him when he has to teach somebody to drive a high-perch phaeton? I asked James the footman (as the Most Likeliest Person in this household to know the answer to my question) & he informed me that the highest high-perch phaeton in all of London is owned by an Individual called Whitstock. [...] I believe we ought to take Action as soon as possible to let your poor brother not continue in this sad state.

Your affectionate friend, Carlotta Stanton

Guess what! Three More Facts about the Brandnew Novel

1. Griff doesn't like dancing.
2. However, this season he is obliged to attend balls in order to meet eligible people of the female persuasion.
3. In Chapter 3 our hero & heroine meet at one such ball and they dance:

It occurred to her then that the poor man was probably horribly nervous - Mr. Bernstone [the music teacher at St. Cuthbert's] had warned them that there existed  gentlemen who might feel uncomfortable about dancing and who had a propensity  for stumbling over their own feet. One had to look at such unfortunate persons with charity, he had impressed upon the girls at St. Cuthbert's. Under no circumstances must such poor people be teased or bullied or their coats decorated with slips of paper bearing comic inscriptions.

Three More Facts about the Brandnew Novel

1. My hero has one of those horribly clichéd hero names of romance fiction: friends call him Griff. His full name is George Augustus Frederick Griffin, Viscount Chanderley.
2. He has to find a respectable wife. Fast.
3. He has problems with his papa:

"So," the earl said and eyed Griffin from top to toe. So far he had not offered his son to take a seat, and it became increasingly clear that neither would he do so now. "I have summoned you here today, Chanderley, to discuss your future." The earl paused as if waiting for a comment.

Taking his cue, Griff echoed with forced politeness, "My future?"

"Indeed. It is well past time that you do your duty to your family and produce an heir. So this season you will find a suitable wife. A respectable girl from a good family and with an umblemished reputation."

Griff felt the trap close around him.

"After the wedding," his father went on, "you will naturally remove yourself from London and settle down in the country. I will be generous and leave one of the estates at your disposal. Shall we say Rinton Park?"

Which was nicely situated among the Yorkshire moors. Griff gritted his teeth.

Three More Facts about the Brandnew Novel

1. Wildlife that is mentioned in the course of the story: wild boars, catfish, eels, and a crocodile (well, sort of).
2. My heroine's name is Carlotta (Charlie to her friends).
3. Her best friend is Emma-Louise:

The stagecoach rumbled along the turnpike road. Outside, the brownish-green landscape flew by, while inside Carlotta and Emma-Louise sat squeezed between a shopkeeper from Berwick, a woman with a basket filled with cabbage heads, and a gentleman who was involved in demolishing a rather strong-smelling sausage. Unperturbed by the stench of the sausage, Emma-Lee was knitting. Click-clack, her needles flew as she created block after block of the blanket for her new baby niece. Charlie almost envied her best friend - at least Emma-Lee had something to keep her hands busy! She, by contrast... Knitting had never been her forte, and she had no wish to attempt some embroidery in the coach. She would probably end up with the needle stuck in her eye. Or, at the very least, with her fingers all pricked and sore.

Three Facts about My Brandnew Novel

The brandnew novel I mentioned in the comments to my last posts? The one that I hope to get published by late spring / early summer? Let me tell you about it:

1) The heroine wears spectacles.

2) I'm a Bad Author who knowingly includes historical anachronisms in her novel: there will be wild boars. And wild boars, alas, became extinct in Great Britain during the Middle Ages. But since I like wild boars, wild boars you are going to encounter.

3) And you're going to encounter them already in the first chapter (yes, I know, shocking), which starts like this:

Chapter 1

in which our story opens with wild boars,

highwaymen, an an early-morning stroll

up St. James's Street

When the century was still in its teens, and on one surprisingly sunshiny day in April, there drove up to the rusty gate of Miss Pinkerton's Academy for Young Ladies, on Chiswick Lane, a large battered coach, with two fat horses and a fat coachman, his face mottled with hectic red. A scrawny youth, who sat on the box beside the rotund coachman, bit his nails, tugged at his sweaty hair, and scrambled down the box as soon as the coach drew up opposite of Miss Pinkerton's spotted brass plate. St. Cuthbert's Academy for Young Ladies, it read with old-fashioned, un-neoclassical flourish. One corner was dented and below the letters somebody had scratched a leering face. It might have been the face of a gargoyle, or perhaps the scratcher had simply not been used to working with brass.

(Which is a parody of the beginning of Thackeray's Vanity Fair.)

Pssssst ... another new cover ...

So as I said, I'm overhauling my old (never finished) podcast novella Betrayal. Which of course means that it also needs a new cover, for you cannot dress overhauled stories in old covers, can you? (Poor story, it would probably cry over still being dressed in its old drab clothes.) So without further ado I give you the brandnew cover for Betrayal!

A story I would have loved to read

By now it's probably no secret that I'm in love with Richard Doyle, the early Victorian illustrator. This sketch is a copy of his watercolor "She hid behind a rosebush", which is part of a series of illustrations intended for a story called "The Eagle's Bride". I've never been able to find out anything about this story - apparently it was never published. And apart from this one watercolour, I've only ever seen the preliminary sketches in one of Doyle's sketchbooks from the mid-1840s.

Judging from those sketches, "The Eagle's Bride" is a story I would have loved to read. I mean, dashing knight finds damsel in distress cowering behind a rosebush and rescues her - what's not to like? (Apart from the colour of my horse's head and the shadows on my knight's suit of armour, that is. *g*)

Dorothy Dunnett, Roman Nights

One of the things I'm trying to do this year is to keep a reading journal. I started one last year in March, when I stumbled across the lovely reading journal produced by Leuchtturm, but abandoned it in April (understandable in a way, since in April things turned rather bleak). I took it up again in late December and so far, have managed to stick with it. *knocking on wood*

I like the layout of the Leuchtturm book: apart from lines where you can note down the title, author, date of publication, genre, and date when you read the book, there's plenty of space for notes and quotations, and they even have included some very convenient boxes for your rating. AND there's an alphabetical register at the end of the book. As I said, very convenient all around.

I don't just note down new books I've read, but also re-reads. In an effort to cut back on my book-spending, I've done a lot of re-reading this year (but never fear, I made up for that by falling in love with the books produced by the Folio Society *sigh*). A couple of days ago I found out that Dorothy Dunnett's Johnson Johnson mysteries (or the Dolly mysteries) have been released as e-books. (Wheeee!) As a rabid Dunnett fangirl I simply had to check them out, never mind that I already have them as print books. (Some of those are pretty grubby, though, and in one case, I had to cut the corners of some pages because of the truly disgusting stuff sticking to them.) (Really, what do some people do to their books?!?!?!)

I decided to get the Kindle version of Roman Nights (or Dolly and the Starry Bird). Here's the blurb:

Ruth Russell, an astronomer working at the Maurice Frazer Observatory, is enjoying herself in Rome – that is, until her lover, Charles Digham, a fashion photographer and writer of obituary verses, has his camera stolen. The thief ends up as a headless corpse in the zoo park tolleta. Johnson Johnson, enigmatic portrait painter, spy and sleuth, is in Rome to paint a portrait of the Pope and is therefore on hand to investigate in one of Dunnett's usual thrilling and convoluted plots that grips the reader from cover to cover. There is something far more deadly at stake than just the secrets of a couture house …

As all of the Dolly books, Roman Nights has a female first person narrator (in this case, Ruth), and the opening sentence concerns the bifocals Johnson Johnson is wearing:

I have nothing, even yet, against bifocal glasses. I know some very nice poufs and a couple of stockbrockers and a man who keeps a horn moustache comb in his jumpsuit. I'm a girl who doesn't shock easily.

Or so I thought until I first met Johnson Johnson, which was outside the Rome zoo in November. 

He was there because he was waiting for me, although I didn't know it. I was there on a day's leave from the Frazer Observatory. If I'd stayed on leave, none of it might have happened.

And so it starts. All of the Dolly books are fairly eccentric (think balloons filled with lethal gas), with impossible twists and turns. The "hero" of the series, Johnson Johnson, portrait painter and (former) secret agent, often stays in the background and we only get to see him through the eyes of others (which is typical for Dunnett's heroes). As with all of Dunnett's novels, one of the great delights of the book is how language is used. Dunnett has a way with words that is awe-inspiring: both witty and intellectually challenging. As  reader you really have to stay on your toes. But you're rewarded with gems like this one:

Every ruin [in Rome] is packed like a biscuit box.

Or,

The railings of the Palazzo Barberini are upheld by marble weightlifters with beards and grimaces of incipient hernia.

Or,

In Rome, there is a pathological shortage of small coins. For change, the little shops tend to use candy.

Aren't these delicious?

I gave the book four stars. It is somewhat lengthy, but it is full of wonderfully eccentric scenes and it has a very nice twist at the end. 

In the works: BETRAYAL

Do you remember that novella which I wrote for my now defunct podcast (*cough* and which I never finished *cough*)? I expanded the story and plan to post an updated (free) audio version soon. This is the blurb:

On a golden day in early summer, two young boys meet in the crowded streets of Florence and change the lives of a man and a woman forevermore.

For seventeen years Ash has been eaten up alive by bitterness and hatred, caught fast in the clutches of the past. For seventeen years he has not been able to look at the boy he raised as his heir and not remember the terrible betrayal he had to endure. And yet, for seventeen years he has closed his eyes against the even more terrible truth ...

Seventeen years ago Georgina fled from England and all she ever held dear. But for the sake of her child, she must return to confront the man whom she once loved more than life itself until lies and deceit tore her life and marriage apart.

Will their love stand a second chance?

Part of the story is set in what is hands down my favourite house in the whole wide world: the Villa unter den Linden. The current house was built in 1904 by the factory owner Herbert von Meister. Rather than moving to a more posh town like his relatives, he decided to have his new house built on the banks of the river Main, with a view of his factory right across the river.

The name "unter den Linden", under the linden trees, is a bit of a misnomer because the trees that line the drive today are chestnuts. But there once was a drive lined by linden trees: this belonged to the old house which had been torn down to make room for Herbert von Meister's villa.

My use of the current house in a novel set in the early nineteenth century might be anachronistic, but I love the house so much that I simply had to put it into one of my books.

This is the beginning of Chapter 1:

In the roseblush morning room of the Villa under the Linden Trees, Mrs. Georgina Crawley took breakfast with her employer and read the newspaper to the old lady. Once upon a time, she had had a morning room of her own, a house of her own, servants of her own, but that was all so far in the past that she hardly ever dwellt on it any more. Indeed, it was all so long ago, it now felt like another lifetime to her, a dream of a distant past, easily forgotten. She had built a new life for herself here in this villa on the river, in one of the small towns that spread along the river Main west and east from old, venerable Frankfurt like pearls on a string. 

Paper rustled as Georgina turned the page. "It seems that young Dr. Rüppell has been sending Egyptian artefacts to the naturalist society in Frankfurt."

"Naturalist?" Frau Else snorted into her coffee. "What a fancy word for butterfly-hunters and bone collectors! What is the world coming to, I ask you, when boys fresh out of school deem it necessary to dash off to some faraway places, simply to dig up bones or, worse, drag home some poor, wee beasties." The old woman's eyes narrowed as a new thought occurred to her. Judging from her expression, it was a most dreadful thought indeed. "Do you think he will bring back a camel?"

Georgina glanced at the paper and quickly scanned the article. "There is no mention of a camel."

"He will want to bring back a camel. Or even an elephant. These people always do." Frau Else shook her head.

New covers!

Would you like to have a look at the new covers for my old novels? I hope you'll like them just as much as I do!

For Castle of the Wolf, I've decided to go with another grumpy-looking (but scrumptious!) man in blue.

And for The Lily Brand, we need some chesticles, of course!

Escaped from Deadline Hell!

I spent the past few days in deadline hell, scrambling to finish an article that was due on Thursday (didn't make it till then; I needed a day longer for proofreading and polishing). After weeks and weeks and weeks filled work, today was the first day I could take off and not feel guilty about it. Whew! Let me tell you, the feeling went quite to my head. :-)

In order to celebrate the finished article, I decided I would order some new watercolours because I recently realised I would be able to modify my trusty waterbox and add a couple more half pans (yay!). So spent an hour or so poring over colour charts (not that I hadn't thought this through before, but hey, you want to be absolutely, 100% certain that the stuff you're about to order is really the stuff you want), then I went a bit crazy in my sketchbook thinking about all the crafty DIY stuff I'm going to do to my watercolor box ...

double page from my Moleskine sketchbook showing my watercolor box (real size - it's that small!) with my current palette

 ... then I had lunch, then I went shopping for bananas (since I've started with Weight Watchers, I can't have enough bananas at home), then I watched TV (Murder She Wrote) (I LOVE Murder She Wrote - nice and cozy, no disgusting shots of people's innards, no totally disturbed serial killers) with the kitteh on my nap and my sketchbook right next to me and practiced trees by copying the sketches from James Richards's Freehand Drawing and Discovery. Though the book is primarily targeted at designers and architects, it is quite useful for interested amateurs *g* as well, for it includes a host of tips how to draw lively urban landscapes. One of the exercises involves trees. So trees I doodled. This is one of the results.

(I added the watercolour later, without the telly and without the cat.) (I really don't like the way the paper in Moleskine sketchbooks look when you scan the pages and I can't wait to start a new sketchbook!)