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Okay, so here's the thing about writers. Nobody makes us write. Nobody puts a pistol to our head and says, "Your words or your life." We might write for money but still when we write, we put something of ourselves into the result.I send work out into the world regularly. I iron its spotted handkerchief, tie its little pack with the best knot in my repertoire and polish its stick. I don't have stupid expectations, I fully expect it to come back - but even so, when it does I HURT.
All of which is a long way of saying that my two-part jigsaw serial has just returned home rather less jaunty than when it set out.I know it's not a bad story. I know it's simply that it wasn't quite right for the editor I sent it to. C'est la vie. Tomorrow I'll look through it, make it a nice new packed lunch and send it somewhere else.
But right now I feel like drowning my sorrows.
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Where have I been, you ask?
I have been creating .....................THIS!
Yes, it's the component parts of the
2009 RNA Conference Pack !
Now, all I have to do is separate and combine them.
(You'd think for the length of time it's taken that it would be a larger set of piles, wouldn't you?)
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Hot from the very talented paintbrush of David Young comes the cover for Fortunate Wager, my newest Newmarket Regency. I am quite amazingly pleased with it!
If you have read Fair Deception, you will remember Caroline Fortune, who played a walk-on part. Being a girl of decided opinions, she made it very clear to me that she was destined for far greater things - and so Fortunate Wager was born.
As you can see from David's lovely cover, Caroline frequently sneaks out at dawn in her brother's clothes to exercise his horses. It's only when she finds injured nobles that the problems start...
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Lovely research day on Thursday in lovely Georgian Bury St Edmunds.
First was a lecture in the Guildhall on the problems of directing Georgian plays for a modern-day audience. This was given by Colin Blumenau (the artistic director of the Theatre Royal BStE) whose enthusiasm for the repertoire of the Georgian era just spills out of him. At several points during his talk I thought "Ahh, right!" and "Yes, of course!". As my Newmarket-Regency-in-progress revolves around a certain touring company, this will come in very useful.
Next it was off to meet my good friend Elaine to show her the Subscription Rooms (where we spent some time being Lost In Austen)
and then up to the Market Cross art gallery which used to be the theatre before the Theatre Royal was built in 1819.
Then in the evening we went to the Theatre Royal itself to watch a rehearsed reading of The Wolf and The Lamb (a one-act farce by Wilks and enormous fun). I cannot BELIEVE these guys had only had one day to rehearse this. They were fabulous! After the interval came Katie Bonna's The Celebrated Mrs Inchbald, in which Katie very cleverly shows key moments in Elizabeth Inchbald's life. Inchbald was a very witty playwright (who just happened to have been born near Bury St Edmunds) who believed in reform by stealth. Certainly her work changed people's opinions in a rather more peaceful way than radical revolution!
I had said to Elaine earlier that in the interests of research, I'd chosen seats in the end box right on the apron of the stage itself. It proved to be a brilliant place, so close to the action and really making me feel part of the period.
Roll on the next 'Restoring The Repertoire' offering from the Theatre Royal!
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Oh dear. Another week vanishes into the past without me noticing. This is mostly because I have been working out how to write a serial from first principles.
I always knew that the idea generated from this jigsaw (see below) would be too long for a normal short story. What I hadn't fully appreciated is that creating a magazine two-parter isn't a straightforward matter of chopping an 8000 word story in half. You have to make each half satisfying in itself. You must also keep minor characters (a fault of mine) to their own episode otherwise you have to re-explain them. And you can't drop clues to pick up later, because people are reading the sections a week apart.
There's also the fact that Part Two must be able to be read as a stand-alone if necessary. Oh, and Part One definitely has to have that "Memo to self: buy next week's issue" message.
But boy is it fun learning!
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I am delighted to announce that my second Newmarket Regency has been sold to Robert Hale Books Ltd! Fortunate Wager - as the title suggests - is set in the heart of the Newmarket racing scene. No publication date yet, but probably November this year..
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Here's a nice little Sunday afternoon mystery. There I was, sorting stuff out (as you do when daughter is coming home from Uni next week and you have to turn what has been a handy dumping ground all term back into something resembling the bedroom she left in January) and I opened up a box (yes, I know, big mistake) that I'd retrieved from my mother's bungalow and found a mysterious envelope bundled up inside.
Stamp Helvetica 50 somethings, postmarked Geneva, date possibly 1945 (but possibly not)
Address label: "The Lancet" which is a British Medical Journal that as far as I am aware my family has no connection with at all.
Inside was a pile of wooden jigsaw pieces. Curiouser and curiouser.
So I shook them out. They were hand cut and not at all regular so... Well what do you think? I made the jigsaw, of course.
Now - this is the weird bit. I KNEW that girl in the pink dress. And I nearly knew the woman in the yellow blouse at the back. And the little girl on the right had a haircut the dead-ringer for one I had when I was five or so. She could almost have been me at that age, except I knew she wasn't me.
At this point I had a cup of tea. I mean, she really wasn't me, right? Because this photo-print-jigsaw thing must be a lot older than than that. And why was it in a Red Cross envelope postmarked 1945?
I looked at the jigsaw on and off for the next hour. "That woman at the back looks a bit like Nanna," said son on one of his passages through the kitchen. "No, it's not," I said. "Nanna never looked like that." And then (after another cup of tea) it hit me. The little girl on the right - the one that definitely wasn't me - that was my mother. Which meant that the girl in the pink dress (that I'd KNOWN I'd known) was my aunt. And the woman in the yellow bending over at the back was my Nana.
I rang my aunt to ask if she owned a pink dress with a white collar when she was about eight years old, but she was out.
And I still don't know why it was in a 1945 Red Cross envelope addressed to The Lancet.
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Hey! Amazon just reduced the price of Fair Deception! (See side panel)
Quick - buy one before they change their mind!
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Nice couple of days in London. First at the Intimate Portrait free exhibition at the British Museum studying 18th/19th Century informal portraits and miniatures where I fell totally in love with Archibald Skirving - or at least, with his self-portrait.
[Archibald Skirving, Self-portrait, 1790. On loan from the Scottish National Portrait Gallery]
Then to the March meeting of the RNA where a packed room heard all about how to endear ourselves to our publicists (should we be in the fortunate position of having one).
Highlight of the meeting for me, though, was that my friend Kate Thomson was awarded this year's Katie Fforde Bursary for unpublished RNA members who really deserve to have made it by now. Go, Kate!
(I have serious frock-envy, but I still love you.)
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It doesn't take much to excite me. So when I was browsing sites for old maps of Suffolk last night and came across this print of the entrance to Newmarket in 1828 I did a small jig of joy (it had to be a small one because (a) everyone else was asleep and (b) there isn't much space in the workroom).
I LOVE the entrance to Newmarket. Always have done, ever since my first view of it when we were considering moving here from London. And here it is - just as Kit describes it to Susanna in Fair Deception. Enjoy!
[Drawing by William Westall, Engraving by Edward Finden]
. “Whoa, there!” The horses came to a halt and she heard Kit’s voice calling from alongside. “Look! Isn’t Newmarket the prettiest prospect? Think so every time I come!” He sprang down from the curricle and opened the carriage door.
. Emerging, Susanna at once saw what he meant. All around lay the wild, empty expanse of Newmarket Heath, but in front the road fell away to reveal the elegant main street of a market town nestled snugly between one rise and the next.
. “I believe you’ll like it,” said Kit. “I never knew such a town for so many things going on for its size. Why, there must be upwards of a dozen places where you can get a decent chop and a good bottle of claret.”
. John Farley snorted. “And a couple of score more where you take your life in your hands asking for a tankard of ale, Mr Kit! Miss Susanna won’t be going to any of them. Nor the mills or the cock-fighting.”
. Susanna smiled. “Mrs Belmont did say it was not a town for ladies.”
. “Not when the race meetings are on,” conceded Kit. “It is all horses, horses, horses. But I daresay it is much like any other place for the rest of the time.” He pointed. “You cannot tell it from here but the road divides the town. The right-hand side has the larger properties: Crockford, Queensbury and so on keep houses here. Further along on the left is the warren where Johnny’s doubtful taverns are situated, but there are a good many ordinary, solid villas to be found too.”
. An odd tightness constricted Susanna’s chest as she gazed down at the street with its carts, phaetons and carriages. She had been so busy keeping Kit at a distance in case some hint of her feelings for him escaped that she had managed to push this moment to the back of her mind. But now she was actually in Newmarket, about to descend into the town itself and still she hadn’t told him about her past.
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Okay, let's have a writing-related post for a change (er, no, I'm not much further on - but I do know an awful lot about a strolling player's life in the early 19th Century now.) I had to arrange a library visit this morning so afterwards, in pursuance of period detail, I trotted over to the Theatre Royal at Bury St Edmunds which was built in 1819. It was shut.
Nothing daunted, I went to the New Subscription Rooms (now the Atheneum) on Angel Hill where Susanna in Fair Deception attends her first posh ball. It also looked a bit on the shut side, but I boldly walked in and WOW! Look at this - and this is only the ante-room! (Yes, sorry about the quality - I had to use my phone because I'd left the camera in the car at the other end of town)There was no one else around at all - but just as I was having a Lost-In-Austen moment, an official-type chap emerged from somewhere unspecified and asked if he could help. And bless him, he showed me the ballroom.
Double wow.
I was so completely blown away that the photos are all over the place. It is just the prettiest ballroom ever. This is the far end.
This is the musicians alcove (they originally sat in a scooped out balcony alcove above this one until the H&S elves got their builders onto it).
And this is a really sweet staircase down which to Make An Entrance.
Well, no wonder Susanna was all of a dither.
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I made a very odd soup this evening. It started when I found a couple of chunks of ancient frozen cod in the freezer (as you do). Mmm, I thought, I quite fancy fish. Then I spotted a tub of equally ancient frozen home-made turkey stock (from 2004, evidently a good year for losing things in the freezer). So I put everything in the saucepan with a sliced onion and a julienned carrot and chunks of potato and a handful of frozen peas... and then as it all defrosted I noticed dark lumps drifting up to the surface.
Yup, the turkey stock had had turkey pieces in.
Like I say, odd. But hopefully relatively calorie-free.
So, what's the weirdest thing you've made recently?
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Off to London for a couple of days to do some research and meet up with masses of friends at the Romantic Novelists' Association Awards Lunch.
And look who's coming with me! Isn't she sweet?
(Her name's Nymph. Suits her, don't you think?)
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The Romantic Novelists' Association, who on Tuesday 10th February will announce the winners of the Romantic Novel of the Year Award and the Romance Prize 2009, have just released the results of their 2009 Valentine Poll.
This year, the subject was...The Sexiest Thing on Two Legs and the winner (with a comprehensive 20% of the vote, more than double the count of any other male on the list) is...
Richard Armitage
According to the romantic novelists polled, the sexiest male celebrities of 2009 are:
1 Richard Armitage
2 Johnny Depp
3 Hugh Jackman
4 George Clooney
5 Daniel Craig
6 Sean Bean
7 Alan Rickman
8 David Tennant
9 Pierce Brosnan
10 Gerard Butler
Click here for the full article
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All of which is a long way of saying that my two-part jigsaw serial has just returned home rather less jaunty than when it set out.
