I’m going a bit mad with this blog posting thing this week. Updated this one on Tuesday, and today I’m blogging on Samhain’s blog about how book research is a good excuse to watch more TV 🙂
http://www.samhainpublishing.com/2011/02/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-war/
The Macaronis (me, Lee Rowan, Erastes, Charlie Cochrane, Stevie Woods, Syd McGinley) will be chatting from 3pm to 6pm EST (8pm to 11pm GMT) today at the Coffee Time Romance yahoo group. Charlie is giving away a copy of one of her books in print. I may too, if there’s any interest in it 🙂
I don’t know if anyone remembers me blogging about my morris dancing waistcoat back in the day when I had only just started dancing, and I had to make my first one? I was a size 18, so I naturally bought a size 18 pattern, only to be told (when the waistcoat didn’t fit) that a size 18 pattern makes a size 14 garment. Goodness knows why!
Anyway, I solved the problem briefly by giving the waistcoat two sets of buttonholes and making a stomacher to button between the two sides. As you can see in action here:
In my further attempts to narrow down the sort of things I’m likely to end up writing stories about, I have abandoned text and gone for a diagram. Lo! The Venn of Alex:
So, we’ve got
Plain Historical, Plain Fantasy, Plain Romance and Plain Mystery.
Shining in the Sun is a plain romance, and I have an idea for a plain mystery and a plain historical which may or may not come to pass. But I’m not as happy writing in a single genre as I am writing in at least two at once.
So False Colors, Captain’s Surrender and Blessed Isle are all AD – Historical Romance.
The Witch’s Boy is AB – Historical Fantasy.
Under the Hill is ABD – Fantasy with a strong element of History and Romance.
The Wages of Sin is ABCD – Mystery, Historical Romance and elements of Fantasy.
Future projects include
Whirlwind Boys (AD), an idea for a Historical Mystery (AC) and an idea for a Historical Fantasy Mystery (ABC)
The most consistent thing in the lot is the A – the historical element. That’s interesting, as I didn’t realize I was quite that wedded to it. My new tag line definitely seems to sum it all up, though 🙂
It was interesting thinking this through. It does give me a brand of sorts, but also plenty of room to manoeuvre. Why haven’t I tried Steampunk yet, I wonder? You’d have thought it was everything I liked in a single package.
We’re posting love letters from our characters on the Macaronis blog and on the Speak Its Name yahoo group. Why not come along to SIN and contribute your own? Tweets and text speak are also welcome. After all if we’re letting our characters loose on the computer, I’m sure they’d want to try everything 🙂
The hashtag if you want to join in on Twitter is #themacaronis
I tried my hand at 18th Century lyrical verse on behalf of Garnet from Blessed Isle, because you just know he’s the kind of man to write overblown poetry on scented paper and fold it into the shape of a rose and put it in a box tied with red ribbon and covered in cherubs. He’s the only one of my characters who is!
http://historicromance.wordpress.com/2011/02/14/love-letter-from-garnet-littleton-to-harry-thompson/
Erastes, Heidi Cullinan and I were interviewed last year by a reporter from the Globe and Mail, and they clearly saved the feature up so that they could post it around Valentine’s Day:
It’s a lot less hostile in tone than some of these things, as long as you don’t read the comments. (Seriously – don’t read the comments unless you’re feeling up to a dose of homophobia). A couple of factual errors – Erastes isn’t married, let alone been married for 15 years. I’m not Irish unless you count being born in N.Ireland to English parents as making me Irish. Read the rest of this entry »
I am so thankful that this book is still reaching new readers and gaining new positive word of mouth, but I’m beyond thankful for this review by Cecilia Grant in which she says
darned if it wasn’t just… magnificent. If I’ve ever read a better romance, I can’t recall it.
It really doesn’t get any better than that 🙂 Thank you so much, Cecilia!
This is one of the reasons I don’t blog very often – because I don’t seem to be able to open my mouth without saying something controversial. At any rate, this week I am over on the Macaronis talking about the glory of war and the allure of weapons of mass destruction http://historicromance.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/war-huh-what-is-it-good-for/
Actually, it’s made me stop and wonder if the modern love affair with werewolves and vampires might be motivated by the same thing – a repressed wish to be able to smash things and get away with it. Maybe that’s what people are liking when they like the alpha male? They’re actually identifying with his ability to get what the hell he wants, no matter who or what stands in his way?
Sometimes I wish I was a bit more normal and felt these things, instead of having to think my way into them.
This post is a quick big-up to two of my very talented friends, Mirien and Emma Collingwood.
Mirien is an amazing silversmith, and is in the process of setting up her own jewellery making business, Sidhe Silver. If you love all things elvish, historical, Celtic, mystic, with a flavour of ancient stones rising out of a sunlit morning mist, you’ll love her stuff. Everything she makes is hand made, one of a kind and unique. Check out her Livejournal for photos, and if you wanted to commission something specially made for you, that would be the place to go.
I was lucky enough to get this pendant as a Christmas present this year, and I’ve worn it ever since. I think of it as a compass rose, which comforts me for the fact that I’ve decided not to get one tattooed on my arm after all. (Because I’m getting a cross there instead.)
Emma Collingwood is a writer I’ve known of from my days in Tolkien fandom, where I admired her and she admired me, but for some reason we never dared to talk to each other and say so. Fortunately that’s changed now. About the same time I had Captain’s Surrender accepted for publication, she decided to go into professional fiction too, but as her own boss. So she published the first of her Penny, Dreadful & Tarbottom Series – Lieutenant Samuel Blackwood (deceased).
Which I’ve reviewed here: http://alexbeecroftblog.wordpress.com/2007/12/18/lieutenant-samuel-blackwood-deceased/
Now the second in the series is out, The Radiant Boy: Four Ghost Stories from the Age of Sail
This one, unlike the last, is not a m/m romance, but it does do exactly what it says on the tin 🙂 It contains four charming and moving ghost stories set aboard ship in the Age of Sail. Slightly creepy, but not the kind of scary that will keep you from sleeping at night, it’s illustrated with lots of wonderful woodcut-style pictures by Amandine de Villeneuve, and is the sort of thing you might buy to give to your small relatives and then end up falling in love with and keeping for yourself.
Like Mirien’s silver, Emma’s writing is very distinctively the work of a unique voice. It’s one that I will keep coming back to, whatever she writes, for the charm, good-humour and humanity of it. However, pirates be warned, this book comes equipped with a curse on any thieving gits who try to take it without paying.
Now I badly want her to get her long novel, The Purser, The Surgeon, The Captain and his Lieutenant out, because I’ve had the chance to see the first half and I’m desperate to find out what happens next.
This morning I am still fulfilling my ambition to post something every Monday, but I’m just not doing it here. Instead, I’m being all bolshy on Jessewave’s blog, with the paradoxical advice to writers not to be too swayed by other people’s advice:
Rebellious Thoughts on the New Year.
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