Blogroll Updated

I decided to update my blogroll to more accurately reflect what I read. I've included some humor sites, so if you're feeling in need of a laugh, I recommend Cake Wrecks, Crummy Church Signs, and It's Lovely! I'll Take It! in particular.

Which ones would you marry?

Earlier today a discussion board I frequent was talking about the new Sense and Sensibility adaptation that just aired on PBS. There was general agreement that Elinor gets the short end of the stick compared to Marianne, because Colonel Brandon is more of a prize than Edward Ferrars. I can't really argue with that, though it kinda gives me the creeps that Col. Brandon is so much older than Marianne and that he apparently falls for her because she's so much like his childhood sweetheart. On the whole, though I love the book, I don't envy Elinor or Marianne. Neither Edward or Brandon is the Austen husband I would choose.

Whom would I choose, you may ask? Well, I'm happy to tell you...

1. Captain Wentworth from Persuasion. He's a self-made man who won his fortune through courage and initiative as a naval officer. And that's sexy--both the self-made part and the naval part. In real life I'm glad my husband is a civilian, because who knows how many Iraq deployments he would've had by now otherwise? But if I'm picking imaginary husbands from 200 years ago, I'm free to indulge my love of men in uniform.

2. Henry Tilney from Northanger Abbey. He's intelligent, witty, and has a well-developed sense of the ridiculous, a valuable quality in a husband whatever the era.

3. Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. As Elizabeth ultimately concludes, sure, he's proud, but he has a right to be. He's brainy, ethical, and generous, and when he realizes he needs to change, he's capable of doing it.

And those are the only Austen men I'd marry. I'm not nice enough for Mr. Bingley--I think his sunny disposition would exhaust me. Edmund Bertram is a prig. Edward Ferrars, though I admire his principles, always strikes me as a nonentity. As for Mr. Knightley and Col. Brandon, I'm fine with age differences when the parties meet as adults on more or less equal ground, but that's not the case for Mr. Knightley and Emma or Marianne and Brandon, so I can't see either man as any kind of romantic ideal.

What about you? Which Austen men would you wed?

At the risk of sounding like one of those feminists with no sense of humor...

...the author of the dual biography of Napoleon and Wellington I'm currently reading really needs to stop referring to Josephine Bonaparte, Kitty Pakenham Wellesley, Emma Hamilton, really any woman who happened to share a bed within or without wedlock with any of the military heroes of the day, as "petticoats." Once or twice would be mildly amusing, but every. single. time. he needs to reference someone with two X chromosomes, it gets annoying.

Class Meme

Normally I save playing with memes for my LiveJournal, but I decided to post this one to my reading/writing blog. I find myself writing about class and social mobility a LOT in my manuscripts, I think partially because of my own blue collar rural upbringing and urban, white collar, elite-educated adult lifestyle. It's not traumatic or something I dwell on a lot, but it's part of me, and occasionally makes me feel like an Other wherever I am--I see people who've grown up urban/suburban elite or who never left the rural South stereotype people Not Like Them, and I cringe, because I know how wrong they are. I've lived in more than one world.

Anyway, without further ado, here's the meme, with items that apply to me bolded.

* Father went to college
* Father finished college
* Mother went to college
* Mother finished college
* Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor
* Were the same or higher socio-economic class than your high school teachers
* Had more than 50 books in your childhood home
* Had more than 500 books in your childhood home
* Were read children's books by a parent - Only until I could read them myself. Then I lost patience with being read to--it's too slow.
* Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
* The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively. - People who are like me NOW are portrayed positively. People from where I grew up, NSM.
* Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18
* Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs
* Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
* Went to a private high school
* Went to summer camp
* Family vacations involved staying at hotels - We camped.
* Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18
* There was original art in your house when you were a child
* You and your family lived in a single family house - We lived in the country. EVERYONE lived in single family houses.
* Your parent(s) owned their own house(s) or apartment before you left home
* You had your own room as a child - Yes, but I was the only girl, and my brothers all left home by the time I was 5. THEY had to share back in the day.
* You had a phone in your room before you turned 18
* Participated in an SAT/ACT prep course
* Had your own TV in your room in High School
* Owned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College
* Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16
* Went on a cruise with your family
* Went on more than one cruise with your family
* Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up
* You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family

Spontaneity is a Good Thing

A few years ago, my main internet community was a discussion board that originally formed around Buffy the Vampire Slayer fandom. One year I went to the board's face-to-face gathering. At one point, almost all the 50 or so people in attendance crowded into the hotel suite serving as the party room and watched the 6th season musical episode "Once More With Feeling," singing along and talking back to the TV as appropriate.

It was good geeky fun, so when I found out a theater on Capitol Hill here in Seattle was hosting a "Once More With Feeling" singalong, I rushed to buy my ticket, especially since a friend of mine chose to have it as part of her birthday festivities. I was expecting something like the board gathering, only a bit more formal and with more elbow room. Good geeky fun, in other words.

It wasn't. At least, not as much as I'd hoped. The organizers quite simply tried too hard. When we entered the theater, each of us was handed a goody bag including assorted props we were supposed to use at various points in the episode--bubbles to give Dawn's ballet a Lawrence Welk feel, those mini-firework popper things (I don't remember their real name) to use at the climax of Tara's song-gasm, etc. That was a little regimented for me, but not a big deal. What really annoyed me was having to wait a full hour after the showtime listed on our tickets for the opening chords of "Once More With Feeling." Before that we had to sit through an MTV report on the Buffy singalong phenomenon, act out scenes from earlier in the series with audience volunteers as Buffy, Angel, and Giles, and be given detailed instructions on what we were supposed to do with our bubbles and finger puppet "Grr Argh" monsters, and so on. The crowd was palpably annoyed--audible grumbling, repeated calls to "Play the episode!" and a loud unison chant of "Start! Start! Start!"

Once the event we'd come for actually STARTED, it WAS good geeky fun. Though I could've done without the fireworks for Tara. Gunpowder? Not a sexy smell. Not even to an Age of Sail/Flintlock geek like me. And it kinda irritates the eyes, especially in an enclosed space. But I have to say, the best audience participation moments were the unscripted ones, like my friend's suggestion that the musical demon marry Xander. Someone two sections over shouted, "But that's only legal in Canada!" "And in Massachusetts!" my friend pointed out. (Probably not that funny out of context, but it worked and felt genuine, unlike all the scripted bubble blowing and firework popping.)

These things are supposed to be in the Rocky Horror tradition, or so I gather. I only went to Rocky Horror two or three times in my life, but I seem to remember it being a lot more relaxed. There were some regulars who told the newbies what to expect, but it never felt like there was a dictatorial emcee who was determined that we were all going to have a good time, dammit, and on his terms.

But last night? As annoyed and, to be honest, angry as I was at that emcee, I'm sure he meant well. He's got his clever ideas and props that probably worked well in some of the cities the tour has stopped. But they weren't working last night. The mood in that audience was getting seriously ugly about 45 minutes into the pre-show, and we'd have been a MUCH more satisfied group of customers if only the organizers had been willing to go off script when it was clear the audience wasn't enjoying it.

Maybe I'm a little too identified with my characters' world...

So, these days I'm primarily writing Napoleonic-era stories with British protagonists who have some degree of military affiliation. A sergeant, a captain's widow, an ambitious naval lieutenant, a general who's taken the bit in his teeth and taken over a story where he was supposed to be a supporting character, etc.

I think maybe I've internalized their mindsets a little bit too much. Tonight at choir practice our director was going over the introit for the Easter service on Sunday. He called it a 16th century English carol. I looked at the header and saw a bunch of French names, the only English name being that of a translator, and without even thinking about it said, "Actually, it looks like a Frog carol." It just popped out. And the thing is, I'm very impatient with 21st century American French-bashing, because I think most of it is stupid, lame, and displays a stunning ignorance of history. But apparently the 19th century Brits are taking over my vocabulary...

Junior history buff?

I'm currently reading a lavishly illustrated book on Nelson, Napoleon, and the Battle of the Nile. My daughter, who turns three a week from today, came and sat next to me on the couch as I was reading. I didn't expect her to pay much attention to my book, since she usually doesn't, except to close them and replace them with the book she thinks I should be reading to her. (She's clearly discovered the two things guaranteed to make me drop what I'm doing and devote my full attention to her--bring me a book to read or show up with her toy baseball and bat. I wouldn't be much of a writer and bookworm if I didn't encourage her love of books, after all. And if you refuse to play baseball with your child, taunting voices in your head begin singing, "The cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon/Little Boy Blue and the man in the moon...")

Of course, most of the books I read don't have pictures. It turned out my girl was happy to spend nearly half an hour on this one, since it was full of tall ships, assorted fortresses, palaces, and cathedrals, and men and the occasional woman in elaborate attire. Or, as she put it, pirate ships ("Arrr!"), castles, pirates, and queens. I'm sure that somewhere Admiral Lord Nelson is spinning in his grave at my daughter's confident assertion that he's a pirate. Oh, and we sang one of the songs from the Backyardigans tea party episode together when we saw a picture of one of Josephine's tea sets.

Could it be we have a history buff in the making here...?

Modern Times

My husband went to the South by Southwest Interactive Conference, and he's spending an extra two days in Texas to visit friends. He's gone for a total of seven nights, which is the longest separation of our marriage thus far, beating out the five nights I spent at RWA National last year.

I miss him, and I'm glad I'm not a single parent, nor the wife of a soldier or a National Guard member in the present climate. Wrangling my not-quite-3-year-old all by myself has been a challenge, to say the least.

But we've been in constant touch all week. I call him every night when putting our daughter to bed, because we noticed she settles better if she hears his voice. (I think that way she knows that he hasn't abandoned us, but that he's also not coming home right away.) He called me several times a day during conference breaks, and once we had a gmail chat going where he was in the middle of a workshop and I was commenting on the content of the session as he reported it to me. He's on the way to Houston to see his friends now, and just a few hours ago he called me from a Chick-Fil-A drive-thru line to gloat, because I love Chick-Fil-A beyond reason, but there are none in the Northwest. A little later I called him back to make sure he knew that the 2007 Mariners ads are out, and that I thought the Double Play Twins was the best one. It's an important marker of spring, after all, the next big milestone after pitchers and catchers report but before Easter or Opening Day.

Every once in awhile as a historical fiction writer I'm staggered by the differences between my life and that of the characters I portray. In one of the communities of imaginary people who live in my head (it's a busy, overpopulated place, my brain), I have a brother and sister who are close in affection, but distant in, well, distance. He's a viscount who goes back and forth between his London townhouse and his Gloucestershire estates, while she married beneath her station and eloped to India with her husband to help him make his fortune. Assuming my research has led me right, in the late Age of Sail it took approximately four months for a ship to sail from London to Calcutta. Therefore, James and Anna can never know for sure that all is well with the other and his/her family--no matter how much good news was in the most recent letter, it could've all been undone by tragedy a few weeks later. That, to me, would be weird and scary. I'm too used to the idea that if I want to check on my husband, on the road to Houston, I can do it NOW. But I expect James and Anna got used to it, and just wrote each other book-length letters. Letters that doubtless included the early 19th century equivalent of, "I'm eating Chick-Fil-A and you aren't, ha-ha!" and, "Hey! New Mariners ads!"

Yes, my imaginary people are that real to me. No, I don't plan to attempt an epistolary novel. But if I ever sell these people's story, I suspect excerpts of their correspondence will be a feature of my website.

A writerly meme

I found this on debg's LiveJournal:

Turn to page 123 in your work-in-progress. (If you haven't gotten to page 123 yet, then turn to page 23. If you haven't gotten there yet, then get busy and write page 23.) Count down four sentences and then instead of just the fifth sentence, give us the whole paragraph.

I don't really have a work-in-progress at the moment, since I finished The Inconvenient Bride last week and am not planning to start the alternate history for another month or two. But I thought it would be interesting to do the meme for my three completed manuscripts, just to compare.

My first effort, Lucy and Mr. Wright:

The two grooms’ faces were blank and impassive. I had no idea if she was telling the truth or not, but there was no feasible way to argue the point. Besides, while I hated missing the chance to ride, at least this way I could spend more time with Sebastian. “Of course,” I said. One of the grooms sprang forward to assist me into the barouche, and Sebastian smiled a welcome.

My second (and so far my favorite), The Sergeant's Lady:

He halted and drew her against him to whisper in her ear. “The gear is in the square there.” She looked and saw two bored sentries with a single torch for light guarding a great assemblage of wagons. “Stay here,” he continued. “If they catch me, you’ll see it. If they do, go. Slip out, swing around the edge of the village past the sentries, then find the road and walk until you get to the next village or farm. Ask them to hide you. Bribe them.”

My third (a reworking of the first so thorough I count it as a different book), The Inconvenient Bride:

The maid Polly entered, carrying a little bundle wrapped in paper. “A groom from Orchard Park just brought this for you, miss,” she said, her expression correctly bland but her gray eyes alight with curiosity.

Reading that last, I realized that I went a few chapters after this scene without referring to the heroine's maid by name, and then started calling her Molly until the end of the book. Oops.

Overheard in the grocery store...

...while in the frozen food aisle, from another woman with a cell phone at her ear:

"Did you say you wanted pot stickers or popsicles?"

Come to think of it, they DO sound alike....

It all depends what your definition of pizza is...

Last Saturday my husband and I had dinner at a newish restaurant called Serious Pie, a fancy pizzeria owned by Tom Douglas, founder of a miniature empire of Seattle restaurants. Needless to say the pizza is nothing at all like what you'd order from Domino's, and Dylan and I loved it. Dylan ordered the "green eggs and ham" (soft-cooked egg, arugula, and spicy coppa ham), while I had that night's special, which featured onions, garlic, and thin slices of roasted yam. Next time we go, I want to try the foraged mushroom and truffle cheese and the yukon gold potato with rosemary and garlic oil.

Yes, it's an eensy tad pretentious. But utterly delicious, and the crust is a revelation, thin but substantial, perfect in texture, and with a wood-oven char that ought to taste burnt but is the bread equivalent of the smoky, crispy outer bits of good barbecue.

So, after this blissful culinary experience, out of curiosity I googled the restaurant to see what other diners had thought. While official restaurant critics were near-universal in their praise, it got surprisingly mixed reviews from regular diners. People complained that the crust is burnt and weird-tasting. They griped that there isn't enough cheese (me, I think ordinary pizzas often have so much cheese it drowns out the taste of the crust and toppings, but that's neither here or there). They thought the toppings were TOO out there. In short, Serious Pie doesn't match their idea of what a pizza is.

At first, I was tempted to sneer at these reviewers--don't they appreciate great food when they taste it, and don't they realize this is closer to authentic Italian pizza? But then I realized I don't have a leg to stand on. Give me a choice between the best authentic Chinese food and the Americanized mu shu chicken and sweet and sour pork from the local takeout place, and I'll take the latter every time. I know it's not as good, but it's comfortable and familiar and is therefore what I want to eat. I'm just a little (OK, a lot) more willing to experiment with Italian cuisine, and less attached to the Americanized standards for pizza or spaghetti and meatballs. Quirk of the taste buds or something.

I thought of this yesterday when I received a thank you letter from the coordinator of an RWA contest I judged recently. Enclosed was a chart comparing the scores for the five entries I'd judged--always a useful thing, IMHO, so you can get a feel for whether you're being too harsh or too generous in your scoring. In this case, I was in line with the rest of the panel on all but one entry, but I noticed that one of the other judges was basically my opposite. Our scores were very close on the one entry that was strong on all levels (and happened to be one of the finalists). But for the other four, the two I scored low, she scored high, and vice versa.

The two I scored highly both stood out as different from standard historical romance fare. The settings were a bit off the beaten path, the characters weren't from Central Casting, and in one case especially I could just see the author's love for her characters and setting and all the research she'd put into their world shining on the page, without being at all over-researched or pedantic.

The two my opposite favored were much more typical historical romance fare--AND were to differing degrees completely historically implausible. I couldn't accept their premises, and therefore couldn't enter into the world of the story. Maybe my opposite judge didn't notice the inaccuracies. Maybe she writes contemporaries or paranormals or whatever and volunteered to judge the historical category because she was entered in one of the others. Or maybe she's just not a raging history geek like me. Most people aren't. (I've commented to Dylan that the part of the brain he uses for listing MVPs and Cy Young Award winners, I use for Regency-era marriage law, forms of address for the different ranks of British nobility, and Napoleonic-era military tactics, weapons, and uniforms. This led to speculation on our mutual uselessness in a post-apocalyptic society--"No, we can't grow food, but he knows who was the AL Rookie of the Year in 1987, and I know how to properly address the daughter of an earl." But I digress. A lot.)

I know the moral of the story should be that it's just like the pizza thing. I don't have any more right to put on airs over preferring the unusual and the historically accurate than I do over liking my pizza exotic. But, and it may be snobbery on my part, I can't quite make myself believe it. IMNSHO, the two things the historical romance genre needs most right now are more variety of setting, era, and character type and greater historical accuracy. The variety issue IS a matter of taste, and I'm delighted to read popular settings and themes when they're executed with strong characterization and a fresh voice. But I just can't make myself accept that historical accuracy in what is after all a form of HISTORICAL fiction is trivial and optional.

I'll take liberty AND equality, thankyouverymuch

I tend to think of liberty and equality of opportunity as growing side by side and supporting each other, because IMO that's how it's worked in America, at least most of the time. So I get a bit puzzled sometimes as I study early 19th century France and Britain. France was, at least by the standards of the time, admirably egalitarian. You see many cases of men born into poverty and obscurity who rise to prestige on their own merits. But they were ruled by a control freak censor of a dictator. Britain, OTOH, was a highly stratified society largely ruled by a hereditary aristocracy--but was in almost all ways more free and open.

I'm usually pretty good at putting on the mentality of the past, but I guess as a 21st century American I have trouble understanding why the French didn't seize their freedom and the British their equality, because I'd find life without either equally unbearable. (Not, of course, that I'm claiming 2007 America is a perfectly free and equal society. But you don't want me to go into a political rant. Really, you don't.)

Writer's Block

I have written whole novels. Why, oh why, can I not think of anything more cogent to say in a congratulatory scrapbook we're making for my boss's wedding than, "Congratulations!"?