It is inevitable that your H/H think about each other.  And they should.  But remember, do not duplicate real life here and write long scenes where nothing goes on except somebody reliving events that had already taken place.  We know what happened already. Move on to the next set of events.

But what about the non-POV character, you ask?  We need to know what the non-POV character’s reaction was to the kiss/screw/crisis.

It’s okay.  Move on with the story, have the hero and the heroine do what they need to do, and then to have them think what happened or think of each other only when triggered.

This does two things.  One, it improves the pacing of your story, always moving it forward.  And remember, pacing matters to chemistry.

Two, it actually heightens the tension.

Remember, we readers of romance read a romance for the relationship.  We are already, a priori, interested in what the hero and the heroine think of each other.  By getting on with the story, by withholding revealing what they think of a kiss, a screw, or each other, you are building that tension.

And when the reveal comes, it is more powerful for having been delayed.  And it is even more powerful for having been triggered.  By this I mean, because your hero and heroine are in conflict, they, or at least one of them, do not want this relationship to go in the direction it is inexorably headed.  They do not want to think about the kiss or the screw or the whatever that happened between them.  They just want to get on with their lives.

And by limiting the amount of verbiage you spend on them thinking about each other, by conveying the fact that they only think of each other when they must, and yet they are still thinking about each other all too much for their comfort, you are heightening the chemistry, you are doing the conflict a service, and you do not waste any forward momentum on just mere thoughts.

[Of course your characters can and should reflect on dramatic events.  The point is to do so judiciously.  It is rare that a book is criticized for the H/H never thinking of each other; but too often romances suffer because there is too much thinking going on.]

The example is from Laura Kinsale’s The Shadow and the Star.  We are almost halfway into the book.   There had been flashback scenes from his childhood and adolescence before, but this is the first time we get adult Samuel’s POV, the first time we know what he thinks of Leda–or how he tries not to think of her.

It would not have been so difficult, except for the distraction, the fate that had taken all the floating, chaotic energy of shikijo and fused it on her.  Samuel thought of her with her white shift pulled over her bare legs, drinking tea and arching her feet in a delicate motion like a dancer; he thought of her head bowed, all that shining hair, her hand poised over her notebook and the soft skin of her nape above the demure turned-down collar.  He could not keep his center; he kept falling from the way, losing zanshin, the vigilant unattached mind, and with it years of exercise and discipline.

To combat it, he spent long night hours sitting silently, trying not to want, attempting to shed all conscious desire, and still she crept into his mind like a slow heat.  He sat peacefully, facing a wall, thinking of nothing, and out of nothing the essence of her formed, the image of her brushing out her hair over naked shoulders, the curve of her back, the white roundness of her hips as she bent to step into her skirts.

Perfect.

And I do apologize.  I completely forgot that I hadn’t quite finished the series yet.  But we are almost there. 

Do your H/H affect each other’s growth?

Character growth can come from many different places.  But since we write romance, presumably our readers are most interested in growth that come from the events, realizations, epiphanies, and choices that originate from the core romantic relationship.

Pride and Prejudice–and I will totally challenge to a duel anyone who says P&P is not a romance—is beloved for precisely this reason.  [Well, and beautiful Pemberley too, but I will try to keep my shallowness in check here. ]

Read what Mr. Darcy says to Lizzie at the end of the book:

“Your reproof, so well applied, I shall never forget: ‘had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner.’ Those were your words. You know not, you can scarcely conceive, how they have tortured me.”

….

“My object then was to show you, by every civility in my power, that I was not so mean as to resent the past; and I hoped to obtain your forgiveness, to lessen your ill opinion, by letting you see that your reproofs had been attended to.

In more modern parlance, Mr. Darcy basically said, “Honey, you were so right.  About everything!  And I’ve changed because I recognized just how doggone right you were.”

Swoon!

Long live Mr. Darcy.

Especially when the hero/heroine is viewed through the eyes of the other.

1. This is a very legitimate way to build physical awareness.  Because as one character is taking in the other physically and processing that information, they are, by the very nature of that act, becoming increasingly physically aware of that person.
2. We are full of minor, interesting imperfections that if we observe about ourselves, would make us come across as either anal or appearance obsessed.  By having another character do it, particularly if it is a little detail that might not even get noticed by someone paying less attention, underscores that person’s physic al interest in us.
3. By what he or she notices, you are revealing things about the POV character.
4. By what he or she thinks as he or she observes the other character, you are revealing even more about the POV character.

And here is a massterful example from Meredith Duran, excerpted from Bound by Your Touch:

“You think a great deal of your intelligence.”

She pursed her lips.  The movement exposed a hint of dimple.  In conjunction with her starchy manner, it seemed wholly incongruous. A mere anatomical fluke, he told himself; just a trick of her tightened lips.  Nevertheless, he found himself staring at it, wondering what he might do to make it deepen.  Breathy gasps, flashing dimples: the idea came to him that Miss Boyce’s body liked to sabotage her.

“Of course I do.  I’m a woman.  If I don’t think highly of my intellect, who will?”

He wrested his eyes from the dimple.  Such a peculiar mix of affront and bravado. Her sisters were the acknowledged beauties, but Miss Boyce had her own charms—made particularly visible now, in the context of her improvisational honesty.  Her eyes were alert with intelligence.  The other night, he had looked into them and discovered they were heavy-lidded.  This gave her a perpetually sleepy appearance, so she looked always as if she had just risen from bed.  He smiled, suddenly won over.  She had risked her own comfort to come here.  Let her have her victory.  “Touché, darling.”

She did not like the endearment.  Her face, so bright when she defended her learning, went as dark as a shuttered window.  “But let me come to the point.  You must wonder why I’m here.”

“To beg forgiveness for your father’s foul deeds, I suppose.”

Her mouth tightened further.  Christ, but that dimple conspired against her.  It drew attention to her mouth, which was overly wide and completely unfashionable, and suggested prospects that were not appropriate to the moment.  Or, for that matter, precisely legal.

Amusement stirred in him.  Odd, unexpected, and undeniable: he was wholly attracted to her.  At some primal level, his body took note of hers.  The imperative it issued was blunt and unpolished: five thousand years ago, he would have dragged her off to a cave somewhere.  And no doubt Miss Boyce of the Stone Age, bereft of an education to sharpen her tongue, would have sharpened a rock instead, and neatly gutted him.

Now of course this is fair, as Meredith is probably the prose stylist among our generation of romance writers.  But this is a perfect example of how to deepen chemistry through what for another writer might be a throwawa bit of dialogue: the noticing and interpretation of quirks, the increasing physical attraction, the ironic self-awareness on the hero’s part.

Learn from the best, I say. 

A perfect example below, from the Loretta Chase classic Lord of Scoundrels:

“Perhaps I had better demonstrate how the thing operates,” said Dain, yanking her attention to him.

In his low voice, Jessica recognized the too innocent tones that inevitably preceded a male’s typically idiotic idea of a joke.  She could have explained that, not having been born yesterday, she knew very well how the timepiece operated.  But the glint in his black eyes told her he was mightily amused, and she didn’t want to spoil his fun.  Yet.

“How kind,” she murmured.

“When you turn this knob,” he said, demonstrating, “as you see, her skirts divide and there, between her legs, is a-” He pretended to look more closely.  “Good heavens, how shocking.  I do believe there’s a fellow kneeling there.”  He held the watch closer to her face.

“I’m not shortsighted, my lord,” she said, taking the watch from him.  “You are quite right.  It is a fellow-her lover apparently, for he seems to be performing a lover’s service for her.”

She opened her reticule, took out a small magnifying glass, and subjected the watch to very narrow study, all the while aware that she was undergoing a similar scrutiny.

“A bit of enamel has worn off the gentleman’s wig and there is a minute scratch on the left side of the lady’s skirt,” she said.  “Apart from that, I would say the watch is in excellent condition, considering its age,though I strongly doubt it will keep precise time.  It is not a Breguet, after all.”

She put away the magnifying glass and looked up to meet his heavy-lidded gaze.  “What do you think Champtois will ask for it?”

“You want to buy it, Miss Trent?” he asked.  “I strongly doubt your elders will approve of such a purchase.  Or have English notions of propriety undergone a revolution while I’ve been away?”

“Oh, it isn’t for me,” she said.  “It’s for my grandmother.”

She had to give him credit.  He never turned a hair.

“Ah, well, then,” he said.  “That’s different.”

See what I mean?  With her poise and her presence of mind, Jessica Trent forcibly strikes Lord Dain as an equal–or at least as someone he could not easily dismiss.  Tremendous chemistry in that book and little wonder.

Another excellent example would be the movie Mr. & Mrs. Smith–and if you haven’t seen it, please do so at your earliest convenience.  The whole of Mr. & Mrs. Smith is a metaphor for the modern marriage.  At the beginning of the movie the titular couple have fallen into a complete familiarity-breeds-contempt rut.  Then, as they discover each other’s secret identity, things heat up–they have to consider the person they thought they knew in a whole different light.  And during one of the movie’s pivotal scenes, when they are fighting mano-a-mano, that mutual respect is literally pounded, kicked, and whacked into them.  And the old fire roars back to life because there is now something much stronger to feed it.

What makes for good chemistry?  Great conflict.

What makes for great conflict?  As my critique partner Janine asks, what are the lies that your character tells himself to get through the day?  Who is the person who by the very fact of her existence, by everything she says and does, exposes your character’s lies to himself as just that, lies?

In other words, who is this person who would cause the greatest amount of emotional disturbance in your character?  Who is the person your character most fears for the truth she represent, and yet who cannot be dismissed, precisely because of the truth she represents?

Put these two people together and you have tension, conflict, and chemistry.

Example:

People could not keep their eyes off her.  Yes, she played it very well indeed, the role of the simple, serene martyr, giving up her life and all its brilliant promises to save her people from annihilation.

She basked in the attention.  And she broiled in it.  This had been the part of her Calling she loved the most–that was, before she came to hate the Calling itself.  She still got shivers from it, the way some people looked at her, in sincere, almost head-shaking admiration.

And then there would be others who watched her because she was the freak, a dead woman walking.

Ten days.  They were all that remained to her, before she marched into the maws of death.

If she marched into the maws of death.

“May I have this next dance?”

She turned around slowly.  There were exactly nineteen mobilecams bobbing in the air about her, several representing various media outlets from her home planet of Pax Cara, the rest bearing logos of the interstellar communication conglomerates that were on hand to cover the glamorous goings-on.

The mobilecams had been trained on her, as she gazed up at the dance sphere, her expression the tranquil wistfulness she’d long ago perfected for such occasions.  And she knew just what the voiceover would say too, above heroic music played at a muted volume: What is going through the mind of this young woman, knowing that the fate of her people rests on her shoulders, that her life will end before it has fully begun, and yet her name will live forever?

The man who asked for the next dance had just as many mobilecams hovering around him.  Eleian of Terra Illustrata, the most beloved prince in living memory, the one person she resolutely did not want to meet.

The heir of a non-ruling house, he’d come of age during a time of great instability for his thirty-system principality.  A decade-long civil war that had begun before he was born had produced a dictator who held power by brutal oppression.  After the dictator’s death, chaos threatened to reign once again.

With almost unbearable courage–for his life could have been forfeit at any point-the young prince had stepped in and stood up to those who sought power solely for their own gain.  Against all odds, he’d guided his people back to their nearly forgotten tradition of representative government.

“Your Highness,” she said, with a searing admiration.  And envy.  And a resentment that almost choked her.  His had been true valor, whereas hers was but the appearance of it.

And he’d survived.

“My lady,” he inclined his head.

She was a commoner.  But here the media had taken to call her a prince of her people, and styled her accordingly.

The mobilecams swarmed close, eager to capture the expression on her face.  What would they see?  She had not practiced for this, for dealing with this one man who reminded her with his very existence the fraud that she was-and the bigger fraud that she planned and prayed to be.

(This is from a SF romance novella that I’m working on, as part of the One Beginning anthology with Janine, Meredith, and Bettie Sharpe.)

He certainly disturbs her on a most profound level, doesn’t he, merely by breathing?  And I swear I didn’t alter it after hearing about Janine’s remarkable thesis on chemistry.  This was how I conceived it: the one who plans to run from her burdens vs the one who faced his head on.

Come to think of it.  It actually gets a little better.

“Then why?” she asked.  Why would anyone want to marry a woman who was about to die a very public death?

“The Quiet Girl,” he said.

The Quiet Girl was a documentary film about her, shot when she’d been seventeen.  It had been produced as summer project by a pair of student filmmakers and sent to a Sector-wide vis-media festival on a lark.  To the surprise of everyone involved the film had been selected for inclusion at the festival; to their further shock it had won the grand prize.

The film’s subsequent dissemination had garnered her a degree of interstellar fame that had been unheard of on Pax Cara.  She’d always turned down each and every request for her to go off-world: Modesty, or at least the appearance of it, was an important part of her persona.  But she had enjoyed it, the fame, and the adulation that came with it.

“What of The Quiet Girl?” She hoped he didn’t hear the tremor in her voice.

“I saw it when I was nineteen–and struggling with the course of my life.  I had my aerie in the mountains.  Our princely hold of Terra Luminare was at peace.  I needed not involve myself in distant political turmoils.  Moreover I was afraid: I’d had little dealing with the more uncouth elements in life.

“I was inclined toward cowardice until I watched your story.  Your determination and wisdom quite shamed me.  And you faced certain death, whereas I face only danger and the possibility of bodily harm.”

Stop, she wanted to say.  Stop.  That me no longer exists.

But she listened with a stark hunger.

“And whenever I thought my courage might fail me, I would watch it again.  I can recite word for word what you said near the end of the film: ‘I would have liked to live a thousand years, for life is such a remarkable and marvelous thing, is it not?  And yet I cannot say I regret being chosen for this task.  I live more incandescently for it.  And I am not afraid to die when I have lived so.’”

She’d watched The Quiet Girl not too long ago, hoping to find a renewal of courage in her unquestioning bravery of old.  Bu all she’d felt, as she watched herself give that little speech, had been a numb despair.

He brought them into a closer spin.  “It would be a privilege if you would accept my suit and allow me to share the rest of you days.”

The rest of her days.  All ten of them, unless she managed her escape.

I think Janine might say I did pretty well in setting up this conflict.    It’s not a particular original conflict, that of the erstwhile romantic ideal fallen from the pedestal.  But it is a good one.  Oh boy, is it a good one.

Rest assured that the rest of the examples I will use are not mine.  I wasn’t going to use any of mine at all.  But there I was, at the hotel in D.C., fretting over my workshop which wasn’t coming together, and boom comes Janine’s remarkable insight–related by Meredith, I must add.  And suddenly I said to myself, wait a minute, I have something exactly like that on my C drive.    And it went into my workshop.  The first part, that is.  I didn’t even think of how the second part works on the same principle until I was putting together this blog post.

Next one in the series in a couple of days.

And in the meanwhile, today I’m being interviewed at Romantic Crush Junkies.  Come say hi.

These questions may be standard, but the answers are anything but.  Every writer seems to have a slightly (or drastically) different way of working.

Some of the methods I’ve come across make me white with terror.  For example, covering my entire living room wall with color-coded 8×6 Post It notes. Or outlining.  Others turn me green with jealousy (ahem: the Shitty First Draft).  All of them fascinate me. There may, in fact, be something a bit neurotic about the avidity with which I read explanations of methods that I know won’t work for me.  It reminds me of that phase in eighth grade when my friends and I used to get together to bake brownies, drink milkshakes, and watch exercise videos.

Anyway, there’s a specific reason that craft — and in particular, craftly excellence — is on my mind.  I’ve just reread Sherry’s new release, Not Quite a Husband.  NQAH effortlessly blends superb prose, incredibly nuanced characterization,  sizzling chemistry, very hot sex, and other manner of high drama (rebellions! potentially fatal illnesses! death-defying treks! many whizzing bullets!) into a moving, dare I say epic romance that traverses a not-so-familiar but altogether fascinating part of the world.  It’s a tour de force, and since I share a blog with her, I get to ask how she does it.  Sherry, brace yourself for interrogation!

(Sherry: When I first joined RWA–after finishing the first draft of PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS–and heard people mention the RWA craft-loop, I used to think it was women more dexterous than me talking about their macramé.  That should tell you how much I know about craft.  So read at your own peril!)

Sherry, I understand that the idea for NQAH was sparked by a viewing of The Painted Veil.  How do you proceed once you’ve got the seedling of an idea?  Do you outline, do you daydream, or do you simply begin to write?

I am an epic fail as an outliner.   For doubters I submit the initial outline for DELICIOUS.  You need to break out a microscope find any similarity between that and the final book.

I do daydream.  And certain scenes of intense conflict play in my head.  I think that is one of the best things about the crafting of a story, daydreaming.  You see all the sparkling bits.  Everything works perfectly and seemlessly in theory.  And you conjure all these exciting scenerios.

And then you have to write it.

Many years ago, some friends of mine told me a joke about a first-generation translation software.  During the testing stage, the software performed satisfactorily in translating words and simple phrases.  Then someone got the bright idea to see how well it did with idiomatic expressions.  So in went the proverb “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

And out the other end came “The wine is good, but the meat has spoiled.”

I often feel like that when I put pen to paper.  My beautiful idea, it translates into spoiled meat.

Are you a fan of the “shitty first draft” approach — i.e., do you write without editing — or do you pause to polish as you go?

I used to sneer at the shitty first draft.  I edit and I polish and I spit shine.  And yet somehow I have always, without fail, ended up with an elegantly shitty first draft that makes my editor throw my contract onto a bonfire and drunk-shag her gay best friend.

Lately I have been reconsidering joining the shitty first draft club.

What does your writing schedule look like?  Do you write every day?  Do you have an actual schedule?  Do you write for long stretches, or in short, intense bouts?

When it’s not publicity season, I do write just about every day.  But I am terrible at time usage.  I write fifty words and I go visit a gossip blog.  Come back write another fifty words and check my mail.  Maybe another fifty words and then I’ll look at a romance review site to see what people are talking about.  (But that’s the great thing about writing: Once I have smoothed everything out, nobody knows it was written fifty words at a time. )

When the kids are in school, I work from 8 to 2:30.  When the kids aren’t around, I love to goof all morning (8 to 2:30, ha!) and then write till about ten in the evening.  (One of my sorely regretted shortcoming is that I can neither wake up early nor stay up late.)

If you could change one thing about your writing process, what would it be?  Also, how has your process changed since you wrote Private Arrangements?

I would love to stop writing when I don’t know what to do.  Just stop, and do something else until I have it figured out.  I was able to do that with PA in everyway: five years between first draft and second to learn what I need about writing, then stop and start as necessary.

What’s changed, obviously, is the arrival of the deadline.  It was worst with DELICIOUS, during most of the writing of which I was in grad school at the same time.  My first draft was pure filler, just me putting down words to get to “The End.”  And roundly rejected as such by my wise and strict editor.

I am still learning how to pinpoint in advance where my story is likely to go off-track.  It’s always hard to judge your own writing, it’s even harder judging it on a schedule.  The temptation is always there to just keep writing, instead of recognizing you might have to rework large chunks.

Do your characters ever “surprise” you?  Do you ever experience moments of serendipity when re-reading a draft — that is, do you discover things about the characters from re-reading sentences that you yourself wrote?  If so, what surprised you about Bryony and/or Leo as the story developed?

My gentlemen always surprise me.  Because I go into a book with the heroine much more fully envisioned than the hero, part of my journey is then to figure out who is this man who loves this rather spectacular yet also rather spectacularly troublesome/difficult/maddening woman.  I don’t know if I get inspired while re-reading.  It’s more likely to happen when I’m just thinking about the story, or when I’m actually in the middle of writing it.

For example, in PA, Camden, until I reached the chapter set in Copenhagen, was more an obstacle in Gigi’s way than anything else.  Copenhagen was when I realized his loss–and I went back and revised their interaction up to that point to reflect that.  In DELICIOUS, only in the third draft did I understand what manner of man Stuart was.  His sense of honor drove the story from that point on.

In NQAH, I wasn’t really completely sure of Leo until the scene with the microscope.  (Potential spoiler: On the day Bryony decided to speak to him about an annulment, he brought home a present for her, even though their marriage had been equally terrible for him.)  That spoke of his strength of character and his capacity for love.  That was the foundation of their future.

Imagine that you’re asked to guest lecture in a class on writing the novel.  The students write in various genres.  What aspect of craft would you choose to speak about, and why?

Conflict and conflict resolution. We are storytellers–or at least we should be.  As long as there is strong conflict and an equally strong resolution, we can have a good story.

There is an Austen-like quality to the openings of your three published novels, in which a wry, nameless voice comments sagely on the events about to unfold.  It’s charming and incredibly effective, as is the way you transition very skillfully into deep POV.  But what I’m curious about are your thoughts, as both a reader and a writer, on the first-person point of view.  Very few romance novelists have used first-person POV with success.  Do you think there’s something inherent to the genre — or perhaps specifically to historicals — which makes third-person POV more effective than first-person?

The biggest romance of our time has been written in first-person POV.  Yes, Twilight.  So there definitely has been phenomenal successes.  And when the generation of girls who grow up with Twilight move onto romance, I hardly think they will have much problem with first-person POV.

I myself am completely neutral.  When I saw that there are a lot of readers who don’t care for first-person POV, I was really surprised.  To me it’s like writing on paper versus writing on a laptop.  It’s just a way to write a story, a means to an end, not the end itself.

My own contemporary romance–completely a romance, with nothing remotely women’s fiction or chick lit about it–is in first person POV.  The beginning of the story had its origin in a quickie writing contest at Dionne Galace’s blog a while ago.  And it just so happened that I banged out those 200 words in first-person POV.

At various point, I’d considered whether to switch to third person.  Or whether to add to the narrative with scenes written from the hero’s POV, either first- or third-person.  But the more I write exclusively in the heroine’s first-person POV, the more I like it.  When a romance is written in the heroine’s  first-person POV, you experience the hero much more vividly and directly.   He is more mysterious and interesting and sexy, because you don’t get to know his secrets and his innermost thoughts except as they are revealed to the heroine.   I don’t ever fall in love with my heroes but I’m looking at this one with starry eyes.   Starry, starry eyes…

::wipes drool off keyboard; resumes professional demeanor::

As for why 3rd-person POV is almost universally deployed in historical romance, I think it is a reflection of the importance of the hero’s character development.  Thanks to the First Golden Age of Historical Romance writers, the hero’s arc is a huge part of historical romance.  And you cannot capture his journey properly from the heroine’s first-person POV.  You have to show it from his POV.

But, for instance, the secondary romance in Delicious was written entirely from the heroine’s POV.  That particular story could easily have been turned into a first-person POV narration, because the journey is largely hers.

So my 2-cents conclusion, when the H/H both have significant story arcs, you need to have both of their POVs.  When he doesn’t need so much of changing and growing up and whatnot, then heroine first-person POV should work just fine.

Writers of historical romance have to walk a tricky line between historical accuracy and effective communication with a contemporary audience.  Readers — and writers — want to be able to sympathize with their heroines and heroes, so writers have to wrestle with, and sometimes defy, certain historical probabilities (for example, the prevalence, in other time periods, of certain beliefs about class, race, and religion to which we no longer subscribe).  Diction also stymies me quite often.  (Example: the verb “stymie,” which I adore, wasn’t used to mean “to impede, obstruct, or thwart” until 1902.  Grr!)

How do you negotiate these often-conflicting demands?  Or do you even see them as conflictual?  To put it another way, how do you articulate the distinction between historical fiction and historical romance?  What limitations — and possibilities — do you see within the genre with regard to critically exploring the less savory aspects of times gone by?

The limitations–and possibilities–within the genre with regard to critically exploring the less savory aspects of times gone by is, er, determined by what I can stomach?  And the distinction between historical fiction and historical romance is that I rarely read the former because their endings tend to suck?

LOL, seriously, Meredith, you cannot have asked this question to a person who has thought less of these things.   But just for you, I’m going to scrape together the few thoughts I’d had over the years.

As for critically exploring the less savory aspects of the past, my guide is PRIDE AND PREJUDICE.  What does it explore?  Nothing.  Do I love it?  I do.  And I also look at the present.  If I were to set a story in the present–and I have, my almost finished contemporary romance–would I be exploring the dark underbelly of American life?  Nope.  Am I aware of the dark underbelly of American life?  Yes, I’m a pretty avid consumer of news and investigative reporting.  Do I want to read about it in fiction?  Not at all.  And if I don’t want to read about it, why would I want to write about it?

But I think I answered a different question than you asked.  I think the darkness of history–history, period–holds more of a fascination for you than it does for me.    Then you can only use your own limitations as a test.  How much grittiness, pain, and inhumanity can you put into a romance before an optimistic new beginning is no longer possible for you to imagine for your characters?  Write to that limit if you would like to challenge yourself as a writer.  Half that if you want historical romance mainstream success.  Somewhere in between if you are hoping for both.

(Hey, nobody ever said it would be easy.)

(Or was that even what you were asking?!)

As for historical attitudes, I like to think I’m not writing bigots.  That even if my characters held views typical of their era, they would not let those generalized prejudices trump human decency and kindness.

Diction?  Well, diction can go to hell.  I look up just about every word I suspect isn’t old enough, even some I don’t suspect at all.  Still, a more modern word or two might slip through and I’m actually okay with that.  Think of it this way, do we expect our medieval authors to write in middle-English?  Even Laura Kinsale’s For My Lady’s Heart contained only modified middle-English.  And a lot of Victorian idiomatic usage we wouldn’t understand at all.

Riffing on that last question, do you think that it’s inevitable and even *requisite* to write heroines who are, in some way or another, proto-feminists?  I ask, because I think you’ve done a great job of this; your heroines’ concerns and convictions feel familiar and sympathetic to me while at the same time feeling true to the period in which they live. How do you walk the line between creating a character who feels “progressive” for her time and a character who feels anachronistic or (to invoke a much-dreaded word) “feisty”?

I don’t think it is inevitable or requisite to write proto-feminists.  The trick to making a heroine’s concerns and convictions feel familiar, I think, lies in her struggle for more control over her life and her choices.  There is nothing remotely feminist about that primal human urge for freedom, security, and respect.  It is a universal struggle.  (What the feminists did was to force society as a whole to recognize that women had these same aspirations, that we deserved to have the same opportunities–the struggle itself is timeless.)

That line between creating a chracter who feels “progressive” but still true to her time and a character who feels anachronistic or even feisty, ummm.  Okay, assume your basic research is correct, you have the right feel for your era in your book, that line, I believe, lies in your heroine’s dignity or lack thereof.  Lizzy Bennet still feels fresh and modern as a character today.  Yet because of her dignity, intelligence, and restraint, she never comes across as wrong for her own time.  The feisty heroines are the ones with no understanding of the consequences of their actions, they are the Lydia Bennets of the world, blithely dragging everyone into trouble and expecting to be patted on the head for it.  Lydia, the original TSTL (too stupid to live) heroine, you will note, has no dignity whatsoever.

What makes a book an instant wallbanger/DNF (did not finish) for you?

Incompetence/stupidity on the part of the heroine. And I’m not talking about IQ, but EQ.  A woman without self-awareness and sound judgment is not going to be able to hold onto any kind of happiness.

But that’s usually a mere DNF.

If, however, the hero looks upon this paragon of TSTL and pronounces her extraordinary, then it becomes an automatic wallbanger.

Finally, name a plot that you would never write yourself, but you would love to see written by a fellow author of historical romance.  Why wouldn’t you write it, and why would you love to read it?

LOL, anything I want to read, I will write myself.  Stuff I wouldn’t write, menage for example, I am also not terribly interested in reading.

Your question, however, makes me curious.  What is it for you?

Meredith: Oh, easy: a paranormal-ish romance set in Roman Britain.  At present, my knowledge of the period is so slim that I can’t imagine writing it.  But I’m thinking a starcrossed love between a Roman soldier (who  — naturally — was raised and trained by Druids before he was rounded up and shipped off to Rome, where he learned to disavow his formerly “savage” ways) and the proud Celtic lass whom he once loved, and who is now devoted to fighting the evil Roman overlords to whom he has sworn allegiance!  …I mean, just think of the fun possibilities.  He is fighting down the magical powers he has long since repressed.  She’s determined to reawaken him to his true self.

And on top of that… they used a lot of oil in those Roman baths… 

I know perfectly fabulous authors who say that they don’t know how a book begins until after they have written “The End.” I don’t work like that. I can’t work backwards or write chapter 26 when I haven’t written chapters 1-25. So for me, the beginning of the book is always crucial. It tells me how the rest of the book should read.

This is the first beginning for DELICIOUS.

It was a truth almost universally acknowledged that Madame Durant’s cooking killed Bertie Somerset. The proponents of this conjecture intended it to be a moral lesson—Mr. Somerset, having paid for his gluttony with an early demise, would dine for the remainder of eternity where steaks were perpetually charred and soufflés everlastingly flat.

But the fortunate few who had actually been invited to Bertie Somerset’s fabled twenty-course spreads pondered that same theory with awed envy. Lucky chap, to have feasted upon Madame Durant’s delectable food for more than a decade, and then to have departed this earth with his face buried in a bowl of the silkiest, densest mousse au chocolat known to man. Lucky chap indeed.

While England’s dozen or so gastronomes reminisced fondly over tarte au citron and escargot en croute, the rest of Society, master and servant alike, regurgitated old rumors concerning the special relationship between Mr. Somerset and Mme. Durant—namely, whether she slept with him and how often, though more intrepid souls went so far as to speculate on depravities involving pastry cream and rolling pins.

Long time readers might remember that I blogged about the demise of this opening back in November. I really adored it, but I decided to go with a more utilitarian opening, to help me grope my way in the dark. So for a month or so, the novel began thusly:

The kitchen door burst open and slammed into the wall, rattling rows of copper pans, startling one of them off its hook. The pan hit the floor hard, bounced and wobbled, its metallic bangs and scrapes echoing in the steam and smolder of the kitchen. Verity looked up sharply. No one made noises while she worked.

“Madame,” Dickie, the second footman, gasped from the doorway, sweat dampening his hair despite the November chill. “Mr. Somerset—Mr. Somerset, he be not right!”

Something about Dickie’s wild expression suggested that Bertie was far worse than “not right”. Verity motioned Effie Briggs, her lead apprentice, to take over her spot before the stove. She wiped her hands on a clean towel and went to the door.

“What’s the matter?” she said, walking in long strides to keep up with the second footman as he scrambled in the direction of the house.

“He be oot cold.”

“Has someone sent for Dr. Mead?”

“Mick from the stables jus’ rode out.”

She’d forgotten her shawl. The cold in the unheated passage between kitchen and manor made her shiver. They pushed open what seemed an endless series of doors—doors to the mud room, the warming kitchen, another passage, the butler’s pantry.

Her heart thumped as they entered the dining room. But it was empty, save for an ominously overturned chair. On the floor by the chair was a puddle of water and, a little away, a miraculously unbroken crystal goblet. A half-finished bowl of onion soup still sat at the head of the table, waiting for the lunch to resume.

As I said, utilitarian. And I can’t do dialect to save my life.

Somewhere in the first week or two of December, I was doing some work with the A&E Pride & Prejudice DVD playing in the background. As the mini-series ended, and the happy newlywed couples got into their carriages, I suddenly realized that my hero and heroine had met before. (This is the one big trick I have up my sleeve. Whenever I can’t think what to do, I make my h/h old lovers.) The “Aha” moment led to this beginning:

A single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife, Stuart Somerset had once read. He’d always supposed it to be a rallying cry for the crush of young ladies swamping London every spring, each seeking to marry and marry up. It wasn’t until he came into some successes of his own that he began to understand that Miss Austen had, in fact, penned an astute observation of the male psyche.

A man blessed by Fortune wanted a wife because he could brandish no greater, more visible symbol of that good fortune. His prowess and competence was measured by the fineness of her eyes, the music of her speech, and the elegance of her figure gliding across a ballroom floor. Her desirability augmented his stature; her virtue, his respectability.

These two elegant paragraphs opened the book in the version that went to my editor. A 16-page, single-spaced revision letter came back, promptly much soul searching. I wrote yet another new beginning.

Verity Durant was famous in Paris and infamous in London.

Her Gallic celebrity was the result of her culinary prowess, reputed to rivaled that of the great Auguste Escoffier. French gastronomes who had feasted upon her twenty-course spreads carried home with them reverent tales of her remarkable discipline, her impeccable technique, and most of all, her divine food–so potent that old men dined with the gusto and hunger of adolescent boys, and so alluring that even new lovers forsook each other, at least for the duration of the meal, for the pleasures she proffered.

The English public, largely uninterested in food but extraordinarily titillated by sexual improprieties, knew her mainly for her torrid affair with Bertie Somerset, her patron and employer. After all, it was repeatedly whispered that she ruled her kitchen with an iron fist, that she received an exorbitant salary per annum, that she threw pies in old Bertie’s face without fear of dismissal, and that in person—not that many had seen her in person—she was the most underrated beauty since Cinderella.

Now here, for pedagogical purposes, allow me to present the first three paragraphs of PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS.

Only one kind of marriage ever bore Society’s stamp of approval.

Happy marriages were considered vulgar, as matrimonial felicity rarely kept longer than a well-boiled pudding. Unhappy marriages were, of course, even more vulgar, on a par with Frau Von Teese’s special contraption that spanked forty bottoms at once: unspeakable, for half of the upper crust had experienced it firsthand.

No, the only kind of marriage that held up to life’s vicissitudes was the courteous marriage. And it was widely recognized that Lord and Lady Tremaine had the most courteous marriage of them all.

Yep. With DELICIOUS, I was very much trying to recapture the mood that I had set in those three paragraphs for PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS. And in doing so, I forgot two very important things. One, DELICIOUS is a very different story, not same but different, but different different. Two, in PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS, a few paragraphs down, I had this:

Therefore, when Lady Tremaine filed for divorce on grounds of Lord Tremaine’s adultery and desertion, chins collided with dinner plates throughout London’s most pedigreed dining rooms. Ten days later, as news circulated of Lord Tremaine’s arrival on English soil for the first time in a decade, the same falling jaws dented many an expensive carpet from the heart of Persia.

And that, was no empty atmospheric mumble-jumble. It set up the conflict and immediately pushes the story close to the brink–passion, Anger, SEX! Thud. None of my DELICIOUS openings had this crucial storytelling component, despite all the wordsmithing that went into them.

Finally, after much more soul searching–okay, I can’t lie any more, I never soul search. I was just sitting on the bus to school, thinking about the test I had to take, and suddenly I knew how I should begin DELICIOUS. It goes a little something like this.

In retrospect people say that it was a Cinderella story.

Notably missing was the personage of the Fairy Godmother. But other than that, the story seemed to contain all the elements of the fairy tale.

There was something of a modern prince. He had no royal blood, but he was a powerful man—London’s foremost barrister, Mr. Gladstone’s right hand—a man who would very likely one day, fifteen years hence, occupy 10 Downing Street and pass such radical reforms as to provide pensions for the elderly and health insurance to the working class.

There was a woman who spent much of her life in the kitchen. In the eyes of many, she was a nobody. For others, she was one of the greatest cooks of her generation, her food said to be so divine that old men dined with the gusto of adolescent boys, and so seductive that new lovers forsook each other, as long as a crumb remained on the table.

There was a ball, not the usual sort of ball that made it into fairy tales or even ordinary tales, but a ball nevertheless. There was the requisite Evil Female Relative. And mostly importantly for connoisseurs of fairy tales, there was footgear left behind in a hurry—nothing so frivolous or fancy as glass slippers, yet carefully kept and cherished, with a flickering flame of hope, for years upon years.

A Cinderella story, indeed.

Or was it?

It all began—or resumed, depending on how one looked at it—the day Bertie Somerset died.

Is this opening truly superior to all the others? I haven’t the slightest idea. But it drives me. It tells me exactly what my characters would do, exactly how each scene should read, and exactly how much flab I should cut out from what I’ve written so as to achieve the desired emotional intensity.

And so I think I’ll stick with it.

P.S. PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS is now available for pre-order at Amazon.

As I read the elegant examples she gave, my mind turned, not to words, but to something that has occupied a special place in my heart since I first saw it fifteen years ago.

This program, skated to Franz Listz’s Liebestraum (Dream of Love), was and remains one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen in my life. From the choreography, to the execution, to the individual qualities the skaters bring to the ice—his strength, presence, and flair, her loveliness, fragility, and seemingly inborn sadness, their unusual chemistry of both intimacy and distance—I lose myself in it every time.

It is a dance of poignant longing and stunning intensity. And yet it is more than a dance, it is a sports program that had won world championships and an Olympic gold medal in its time. The skaters—the great and, alas, no-long-together team of Natalia Mishkutienok and Artur Dmitriev—performed all the risky elements required of elite pairs skaters in their era: side-by-side triple toe loop, side-by-side double axels, one triple twist and two triple throws.

Because mere beauty is not enough to make a competitive program work. You have to deliver the elements too. Falls on the jumps and breaks in unison make the audience groan and ruin the overall effect. In this, I feel, an Olympic-eligible figure skating program is very much like a work of genre fiction.

People read genre fiction with some rather specific expectations. SF is about saving the world. Fantasy is about the quest. Mysteries need to bring the murderer to justice. And romance, in my understanding, has to deliver hope and fulfillment.

Ergo, since most genre fiction is driven by factors other than beauty of prose, cadence of language, and powers of imagery and metaphors—as if a figure skating program required only the elements—most genre fiction isn’t known for stylish writing. And what stylish writing we get is from writers who, though they choose to work within the boundaries of the genre and compete on its terms, can’t imagine sending their stories out of the door without having polished their prose until it gleams like the Taj Mahal at dawn.

Meaning, they are doing extra work. Work that may or may not be appreciated by readers who pick up a book mainly for the story—not for splendor of the writing itself. Work that would demand extra time and effort on the writer’s part when s/he already has to contend with the major elements of plot, character, dialogue, pacing, and, if you write romance, character growth and chemistry. Work that doesn’t have a market mandate, given that a breakneck pace or a pair of hotly interacting lovers can sell quite well even when depicted in pedestrian language.

I choose to do that work. Because the stories that touch me most are not only beautiful, but beautifully written. Because I find that lovely writing, when married to an expertly crafted story, adds immeasurably to my enjoyment. Because I want to build the Taj Mahal.

One day.

Way back—gosh, was it only six months ago?—when I sent off the partial for SCHEMES OF LOVE to Kristin Nelson, I wrote an accompanying cover letter that contained a “one paragraph blurb that summarizes your work and highlights your pitch” that she specified in her request.

Not being shy, I informed Kristin in the cover letter that my romance novel contained the best hook of all: mandatory sex. Yep, in those exact words. The heroine wants a divorce, the hero insists on an heir before he’d allow the divorce to go through. And we’ve got one very hot book.

There is a reason that romances with setups that stipulate mandatory sex—marriages of convenience, girl selling herself to the highest bidder, etc. etc.—remain perennially popular. We are, or at least I am, hardwired to enjoy the frisson we get when we know something steamy is afoot.

And for that very reason, I am usually drawn to write historical romances that take place in what I call a hermetically sealed bedroom. Hero, meet Heroine, meet Four-poster-bed. What do you mean you don’t know what to do? You are married, aren’t you? And even if you aren’t, you’ve signed a deal in blood to boink for three months straight. I have it right here in chapter three, so get on with it. And neither of you are allowed out until your cynical black hearts break a little bit.

I’m sure you see now why I was pulling my hair out over DELICIOUS. No mandatory sex. This couple, for perverse reasons that drive my muse to the opium den, do not need to sleep together. They want to, but they don’t need to, and the reasons against it are legion, and all I’ve got, in my puny armory of writerly devices, is whatever overriding passion I can foment in them.

And then, because I am a charter member of Romance Writers against Deliberate Character Manipulation, I can’t make the heroine run outside during a freezing downpour just so the hero can find her and strip her of her sodden night rail. Or put the hero in a hallucinating high fever, because damn it, she is his cook, not his maid or housekeeper, and she won’t be the one standing by his bedside should he yank someone down on top of himself. And even when I abandon my principles and have her get tipsy, he wouldn’t take advantage of her inebriation. What has the world come to, I ask you?

So what is a writer of reputedly hot romances to do? Write, I guess, and pray, and stake out all the opium dens nearby in case her muse wobbles out, ready to be taken home for some tender loving care.

Stay tuned for irregular future updates in The Mighty Struggle for a Good Shag.