The Enemy of the Good

August 17, 2016annabowling Leave a comment

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

-Voltaire

Right now, I want a nap. Like really, really want a nap. At the same time, there is part of me entirely devoted to “we were without cable/internet for two and a half days, company is coming on Sunday, I have a Skype session with Melva tomorrow, Saturday’s workshop unlocked that part of Her Last First Kiss where I wasn’t sure what I was doing, and now I am, therefore, I cannot sleep and must do all the things. Right now. Preferably at once.”

Which, realistically, is not how things work. Our friends are not coming to see us because our apartment is a showplace (it is not) -we are going to a museum for that- and there is probably, realistically, plenty of time to get most of what I want to get done, done. For somebody as motivated by lists and planning as I am, this should be second nature, and, in some ways, it is. More on that later. Unless I forget. Because I did not outline this post. Winging it, because this is technically Monday’s post, but we did not have any internet on Monday; our service had been shut off by mistake (the subscriber the technician intended to disconnect was another house on our street; lots of moving in and out around this time of year in a college town, so understandable on their part.) Props to Tim from Time Warner Cable, for doing an A plus job, being respectful of scared-of-strangers kitty, and making sure everything worked its very best before he left.

Okay, not entirely without internet, as one of this city’s perks is municipal internet, but we can only get one bar in our living room, so enough to get the essentials done, but not conducive to mindless web-surfing, falling down a Netflix hole, or other use that doesn’t have a specific purpose. On the plus side, it is enough to text chat on Skype while writing. I have come to know myself well enough to know when I need to blabber to another writer while I work, and when I need to be on my own, earbuds in and head fully in story world. Not a one size fits all approach to every writing session, I have found, and I like that part of the discovery process.

One of the items on my list today was to apply the lessons from K.A. Mitchell’s workshop at CRRWA, to nudge the gelatinous near-the-end part of Her Last First Kiss into shape. There is a particular joy only writers know, of getting our characters to the almost-happy place. Sure, they think they’re happy, but little do they know Everything Is About To Go Down The Crapper And It Is All Their Faults. That’s a fun part to write, even -maybe especially- in romance, because we already know things are going to work out in the end. Hero and Heroine are going to be FINE. They’re going to be better than fine. Because this is a romance, they get to live Happily Ever After (not that it means they’ll never have anything bad ever happen to them again for their entire lives, because how boring would that be? Talk about unrealistic. It means they’ll be together and happy about it, and face whatever comes, together.) so what chance does anything the author throws at them even have in the first place, right? No chance, but we writers have to make “no chance” look like “I have no idea how they’re going to get out of this one” (to the reader, that is; it looks plenty like that to the writer at this stage of the game.)

Which is what had me at my secretary desk, two notebooks open at once (notebook shown is the “official-because-I-say-it-is” notebook for this project (Abbie and Ichabod have nothing to do with this book; they’re just pretty, and they make me happy, so they can stay) and the entries in it are, hm, we shall say well-spaced, because this notebook intimidates me. It looks like this on the outside:

It’s the big one on the bottom; I am lazy and not scrolling. Also, hello, my legs I did not crop out of the picture. Whatever..

In short, the notebook is pretty and fancy and I did not want to ruin it with my horrible straight-out-of-my-brain writing. Especially when it is of the “I have not idea what I am doing” variety and have trouble reading my own handwriting. This is slightly better when I use better pens, like fountain pens, which I use here, or rollerballs, which I used in the other notebook, to take notes in the workshop. Basically, that part of my day consisted of me copying things from the workshop notebook (really my all purpose notebook) into the HLFK notebook and expounding upon/applying the points to Hero and Heroine’s story. At a certain stage of the story, in any genre, readers have some expectations, and if those expectations aren’t fulfilled, readers are going to be cranky. I do not want cranky readers. On the other hand, I would take cranky readers over no readers, because my standards in that department are not that high at this stage of getting back on the metaphorical horse.

Which is actually a big help to the writer. This stage of the game is where we do the thing. Okay. We can do the thing. How, exactly, do these particular characters do the thing? That’s what makes this book different from all the others out there, and there are a lot of them out there, but this one is mine. Well, actually Hero’s and Heroine’s, but I am hoping you get the drift here. Even if you are cranky; if you are cranky, reading a good book could help. Or read one of mine. That would set you apart from the crowd. (cue saxophone version of “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg” in the background)

So, basically, that part of my day consisted of using the pointy part of my fountain pen to stab Hypercritical Gremlins (thankfully, they bleed ink) and rough out exactly how Hero and Heroine would most likely do this particular thing. Find the worst thing that could happen to them, and then make it happen. Well, that’s easy, and provides a healthy dose of schaudenfreud (which I probably misspelled, but refer to Voltaire quote above) -the only way it’s okay to be happy that other people are miserable. I need to run this by N, but I think I am on to something, and the formerly gelatinous part is getting to a nice degree of firmness and providing forward momentum. I am going to call that good.

Morning Pages, the Heir Presumptive, and the Young Pretender

July 6, 2016annabowling 1 Comment

With one week left in my current, much-beloved morning pages book, the time has come to decide on which book will be its successor, and I’d like to say I’m closer, but a young pretender has entered the fray. Going by only what I currently possess, the heir presumptive is this lovely bird and flower themed Punch Studio book:

Endpapers

Lined pages

That’s the endpapers in the first picture, internal pages in the second. Same images on all spreads, where I do prefer that they rotate. Banastre Lobster has no opinion on that.

Normally, the issue would be settled, but we have a young pretender to the throne, this spiral-bound Papaya! Art (the exclamation point is part of the name) gorgeousness, which would continue the Paris theme:

Banastre must, of course, investigate.

My heart did a skippity-skip when I first saw this on the shelves at Barnes and Noble, and I don’t remember when the precious actually came home, but I knew I wanted to save it for something special. Since I still have absolutely zero ideas for any Parisian historical romances, morning pages would fit the bill. Inside pages are not lined, but are lovely.

First, we have this inside cover and first page, which presents a challenge when the discipline is one two-page spread for each day:

Name and address on inside cover, obv, but facing page?

After that, we have these:

one

two

three

four

None of the pages are lined, but those backgrounds…guh. Gorgeous. I want to put things on them. On the one hand, I think Hero would heartily approve of my appreciation of a pre-prepared background, because he used to do that kind of thing, but then again, his experience in Paris (hey, there is a connection!) was not exactly his favorite part of life. He wouldn’t know about the Eiffel Tower, though, as it was a century after his time. The clouds, though, and the design elements, those he knows, and the floral motifs fit nicely for a Georgian gentleman (and his lady.)

The question for me here is, would the lack of lines be a problem? Also, what sort of pens do I want to use on these pages? They’re thicker than regular paper-paper, but not thick enough that I’d feel comfortable using Sharpies, at least not without an ink test, but I don’t want to sacrifice a page for that. Even so, the rotating designs excite me, and since I plan to increase to seven entries per week instead of six, that’s almost two rotations every week, but not exactly, so monotony would not be an issue. If the pages are visually inspiring, I am going to come to them with a better outlook, and, if stuck for what to put on the page, the images have suggestions right there. If I really need lines, I can draw them on with pencil and ruler. Fountain pens or rollerballs are my best educated guess on the pen issue. I’ve tried another book by this same maker, a different design in this line, with ballpoint, and I was so unhappy with that, that I set the book aside. Will need to resurrect that one, with a better selection of pen.

As I am writing this, I am listening to the Hamilton soundtrack. A writer friend will be traveling from Canada to NYC to see the show live this coming week. Right after the original cast departs, which does bring a pang, but, then again, there will be the energy of of the new cast making their debuts, and there will be the PBS documentary in October, and the original cast has been filmed, (I would totally go see this in theaters, if it were to be distributed that way) so it’s possible to get the best of both worlds there. I’ve been listening to the soundtrack, first as an Independence Day celebration (I know, Banastre, I know. Mama still loves you.) and then as part of my “immerse myself in the zeitgeist” plan of working through this draft.

Her Last First Kiss is set in England, in 1784, and Hero is not a soldier; he’s an artist, and he’s spent the pertinent years on the Continent (see Paris experience, above) so he’s pretty far removed from that business in the Colonies, but he does exchange letters with a cousin, relocated to Canada from New York, because expulsion of British and all that. Heroine is the product of a Russian father and English mother, was raised in England and identifies as British. These two have latched onto me in a way I’d been afraid I wouldn’t experience again after the time travel stalled, and I want to give them the very best story I can, which means I need to let their world seep into my writerblood.

The thing with writing historical romance novels is that the characters don’t know they’re in a historical. They think they’re in a contemporary. For Hero and Heroine, 1784 is their now. They aren’t wearing costumes; those are their clothes. People are people, no matter what century in which they do their people-ing, and that’s what I want to bring to live the most. If Hero were a 21st century person, he’d probably be glued to his phone, but he’s an 18th century person, so he carries around a portable lap desk so he can write letters and sketch/doodle. That was actually the first thing he showed me about himself, that desk. Writers, you understand how that works. Once he saw I was going to treat the desk right, then he came a little bit closer, like a stray cat when their benefactor moves the food dish an inch closer to the porch every day, until both cat and human are astonished that they are cuddling in the porch swing together.

If I were going to let Hero pick the new daily pages book, he’d pick the spiral bound. Which is, obviously, a lot thinner than the heir presumptive. Which may lead me to the same dilemma sooner, rather than later. I am not complaining.

There Are Lobsters on My Desk

June 29, 2016annabowling 1 Comment

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In case there is any doubt as to my lifelong case of raging Anglophilia, today’s picture should put that to rest. Paris-themed stationery aside (as in literally; I had to move my Marie Antoinette themed matchbook notepad out of the way to take this image) I’ve been hardwired for most things British straight out of the box, as far as I can remember. Don’t ask me when it began, because I have no idea, though I will allow that, by the time I was one year old, the family newly moved to a house in Bedford, NY, from Manhattan, our bottom-of-the-hill neighbors were Scottish immigrants. Shortly after that, my mom met her best local friend, a British expat, who happened to have a baby my age (yes, our families met on a playground, why do you ask?) Very easy to guess, in this case, what sort of adults I saw most often on a regular basis in my formative years. I strongly suspect they imprinted on me, early, and with lasting impact.

While that probably explains my affinity for mentally hopping the pond, I lay the thankblame (which should totally be a real word) for historical romance being my soulmate genre at the feet of two aunts. Aunt L was my mom’s sister. She lived in New Jersey, and, every time she visited (we lived in CT by this time,) she would bring at least one paper grocery bag stuffed to the top with historical romance novels. I was too young to read them at this point, but it was still my job to take the bag directly to the laundry room, un-bag them, and set them aside for my mother’s later perusal. This was when I fell in love with some of the cover art in that first wave of historical romance. It was all painted back then, not photographs, every cover a tiny work of art. I read the blurbs, noted hero and heroine first names (I’ve been name-obsessed since I was about eight) and was a good kid, not looking into the forbidden pages, not even a little.

Well, kind of. Aunt S, wife to Uncle G, my dad’s best friend from their Army days, wrote one. Then two, then three, you get the drift. I went with Mom to the book section of Caldor, to peruse the rack and keep an eye out for Aunt S’s name. I don’t remember which one of us found it, but I remember how my heart did a skippity-skip when I saw it, then another when Mom took it out of the rack. We were buying that book. We were taking it home. I have had that same feeling many a time, when lifting a much-desired book from its shelf, rack, box, hitting the download button, whatever, but this one…this one was the very first, and I knew, without knowing much about it, that this one would be special. I didn’t know it was going to change my life.

Even before Aunt S wrote her first book, even before (to my knowledge) Aunt L hauled grocery bags full of historical romance novels from NJ to CT (and it only now hits me that my mother and aunts were romance readers, and I never got to talk romance novels with them. I even remember mentioning something about a character from one of Aunt S’s books to Aunt G, another of Mom’s sisters, and her responding that she saw the character differently…you read at least one romance novel, Aunt G, and you never said.) I lived in Bedford, NY, during the Bicentennial (dating myself, I know, but I am fine with dating myself, because I always have a lovely time; I’m delightful.) As in town that was literally burned to the ground by the British Army during the war, except for one house. Home to a very lovely historical society I loved then and love now, and setting for my first historical romance, My Outcast Heart.

Dalby and Tabetha’s story takes place a half century and change before the war, so they’d be opinionated seniors by that time, but it’s safe to say that, growing up around that much Revolutionary history, the Georgian age imprinted on me, as well. Maybe that’s why the Georgian period seems to be my historical default setting when I start a new novel. It’s not the only period I like – I’ve written sixteenth century, English Civil War, turn of the twentieth century romances so far, that are currently available, and I have hopes for my first medieval, but when it came time to start Her Last First Kiss, there wasn’t any doubt that it would be Georgian.

There aren’t any Redcoats (aka Lobsterbacks) in Hero and Heroine’s story, though they’ll likely find a few when they get where they’re going, but in future books, there absolutely will be. Ember and her Golden Man still rustle at me from the pages of notebooks and not-quite-right drafts, and I’m sure there will be other soldiers with tales to tell, so I will keep acquiring lobster-related items along with my Union Jacks and other related ephemera. For now, I’m head down, eyes on my own paper, for Hero and Heroine’s tale, which I can now get to, as I can cross “blog entry” off my list. Happy midweek!

Fiction From the Vault – Perfect English

June 6, 2016annabowling 2 Comments

I don’t know where the idea for “Perfect English” came to me, but I am 99% certain it was due to a prompt in a once-upon-a-time writing group. It isn’t strictly flash, as it’s over one thousand words, and not strictly a short story, as it’s fewer than two and a half thousand; it is what it is. I probably still have the original notebook somewhere in storage, but, without that, can only place the time of writing as “sometime in the 1990s.” Or early millennium. At any rate, in another life. It may or may not have been one of the handful of short stories that made the rounds of some small press magazines, or it may have sat on my hard drive and never gone anywhere. I honestly don’t remember.

What I do remember is Bradley, who showed up in my mind fully formed, and the nameless-until-I-noticed-I’d-never-named-her heroine. I still don’t know that she really “has” a name, and picked Jennifer because it was common for a woman of her age (early to mid 20s) at the time of the writing. I don’t have any plans to revisit Bradley and Jennifer, because they’re fine. They’re together, they’re happy, they’re HEA-ing fine without me, and he’s still doing the thing with the shirts. Not bad for a timed exercise. So, as promised, here we go, for the first time in mumblemumble years, “Perfect English.”

Perfect English

Bradley Ballantine was something a woman had to experience for herself. Tall. Black. Given to lounging about the living rooms of casual acquaintances on rainy afternoons in bare feet, faded jeans and spanking white sleeveless undershirts. Always white. Always new. Nobody ever saw him do laundry, and nobody ever asked him what he did with the old ones.

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Typing With Wet Claws: This Was Uncle’s Idea Edition

February 19, 2016February 19, 2016annabowling 2 Comments

Hello, all. Skye here, for a slightly later than usual Feline Friday. Anty has had an unusual day, partly because Uncle had the day off. She had laundry to do, and then they went out to lunch together. They did not take me, because I am an indoor kitty, but I got fish jelly and treat, so I do not mind. Also, it is cold and windy out. Despite the fact that I have a super fluffy coat (actually, two of them, because I am a Maine Coon mix) I have no desire to be outside in cold, windy weather. Anty tried to set up at her usual coffee house, but the locals must have figured out that it is her favorite place to work, because all the seats were filled by the time she got there. It is okay, though, because it is only a short walk to her other favorite away-from-home place to write, and that place has refills on tea. Anty likes refills on her tea. She drinks a lot of it.

Anty has three articles she is working on this week, possibly four, depending on how things go on tonight’s Sleepy Hollow. For one of the other articles, she has to…uh, she means gets to…read a bunch of historical romance novels, so she can talk about how they all work together. Anty will talk about that later. She is also working on Her Last First Kiss, which she says seems to be finding its stride.

My blog this week is going to be a little different from the usual fare. This week, Uncle has an idea he wants me to talk about. Earlier this week, Anty looked at her sales figures from one of her publishers. Uncle thinks that was a mistake, because looking at those figures made Anty very grumpy. Then a conversation like this happened:

Uncle: Have you ever used your blog to tell people where they can buy your books?

Anty: Uh…..

Uncle: Like put up a link or something?

Anty: (something about websites and internets and monies and bookshelves and human stuff; nothing about feeding kitties, so I stopped listening.)

Uncle: Right, but none of that means you can’t put a link in a blog entry.

Anty: Uh… (Anty did not really have a good answer for that.)

Uncle is very smart, and I would do anything for Uncle. So, I will put in the links. In case you like Anty’s (or my) blogs, or her articles, then maybe you would like to read the books she has out already.

Here is where you can find the books she has from Awe-Struck E-Books. There are two of them.

Her first, My Outcast Heart, is set in colonial New York. For this book, Uncle asked Anty what sensuality level the book would get for its rating. Anty said that, because she does not go into great detail about how humans mate, the book would be classified as “sweet.” Uncle asked if this was the same book where the hero puts his hand in the fire on purpose, to cover the brand that marked him as a thief, and where the heroine sticks her grandfather’s body in the barn for the whole winter, because the ground is too hard to dig a grave. Anty said that it was. Uncle’s response was, “And they’re calling that “sweet?” Boy, are they going to be surprised.” Also, there are kitties in it. The dogs get more attention, but barn cats always make a book better. Just saying.

Anty’s second book from Awe-Struck is Orphans in the Storm. That book could have used more kitties, but it probably would not have changed what happened to the bad guy, because kitties are good judges of character. The heroine in this book finds out that she is not who she thought she was, and travels from the Isle of Man (note: that does not mean it is an island with only men on it. It is, however, where Manx cats come from. I am not Manx. I have a big, floofy tail.) to Holland, where those loyal to the English king fled during the English Civil War. Her hero works for the crown, and the heroine holds the key to releasing monies that will help the cause, only somebody does not want that to happen. The love story is most important, though, as with all of Anty’s books. The cover is by Kathleen Underwood, who captured one of Anty’s favorite scenes.

Anty also has two novellas with Uncial Press. Her first one there, Never Too Late, is set in Edwardian England and Italy (aka Downton Abbey times, and she wrote it long before the TV show was on the air. My Anty is a trailblazer.) Her heroine in this book is a fifty-year-old widow, who decides she is finally big enough to go after what she wants, which, in this case, means the love of her life, whom she once let get away. I will give you a hint: this time, she does not let him get away again.

Her other title there is Queen of the Ocean. I will share a bit of trivia with you; the story was originally called Frances, Queen of the Ocean, but that would not fit on the book cover. This is a reunited lovers story, with smugglers and pirates and a shipwreck (well, technically more than one) and a cave full of treasure. I do not have to tell all of you how much Anty loves pirates. She had a lot of fun writing this one.

None of Anty’s books are related to each other, so they can be read in any order, or by themselves. Anty did not figure it out until I told her, but Never Too Late and Queen of the Ocean kind of fit together, because they are both reunited lovers stories. Maybe Anty could write more like that and then they could all go together. Anty likes reunited lovers. Purr-sonally (see what I did there? Just kidding. I do not purr. That does not mean I am not a happy kitty, because I am. I show it in other ways.) I recommend them all.

Ravenwood does not have a home yet, but it is a medieval love story, where a heartbroken knight errant must escort a headstrong maiden from a plague-ravaged city, to a haven that may or may not exist. Anty will probably change the title, because it does not say much about the story. Maybe Her Errant Heart would be better? Huh. Maybe she could write other stories with “heart” in the title and put them in a loose grouping.

That is about it for this week, because Anty needs to research her articles and work on Her Last First Kiss. Until next time, I remain very truly yours,

Until next week…

Skye OMalley Hart-Bowling
(the kitty, not the book)

Typing With Wet Nails

for the love of romance

my books