I finished Chapter 9. Turned out to have four scenes, with a couple POV switches in the lengthy second scene. What I thought would be the final scene turned out to be too long, so I took another scene from elsewhere in the book and booted the original 9.4 down into Chapter 10. I think that will work. A lot of stuff I wrote in the last draft is just not going to make it into this one, I can see. Oh well.
Then a new scene came into my head and demanded to be the opening for Chapter 10. I'm almost done with that. Maybe I am done. It changes the dynamic of the following scene, of course. The hero is beginning to have his doubts about what first seemed such a no-brainer of a bargain. No-brainer undertakings don't suit him quite as well as they used to do.
Constantly, I have to make a deliberate effort to get back to the external conflict/plot movement. The quiet h/h scenes, in which they learn more about one another and correct their perceptions, are just inherently more interesting to me.
This weekend is the awards dinner for the contest in which I've finaled. I'm really looking forward to it. When I went as a finalist two years ago, I didn't enjoy one minute - I had butterflies in my stomach all evening, worrying about whether I'd win (or place or show) or not. I can't even remember what we ate for dinner. This year, with a better appreciation of what an honor it is just to be a finalist, I'm going to have a better attitude. I'm looking forward to meeting the other romance writers who presumably will be sitting at my table, and I'm going to enjoy the heck out of whatever food they give us to eat.
Monday, July 27, 2009
What I'm Reading: Bound by Your Touch
This was pretty fabulous. I'm still distilling my thoughts. Meredith Duran writes such intelligent characters, with both speed and depth to their perception (they're both witty and complex), that it really makes her h/h dialogue soar. I could have happily read another fifty pages of James and Lydia challenging one another, dissecting one another, figuring out just who one another is.
James's final gesture - yes, making the first move to reconcile with his father, but even more than that, remembering, from a long-ago argument with Lydia, her interest in the Indians of Canada, and proposing a honeymoon there - is one of the most romantic things I've ever read in a romance novel.
The one thing that clunked a little for me was the intro to the next novel's heroine. The hero, Phin, was integrated seamlessly enough, but the scene between Lydia and Mina had so damn much detail about Mina that the gears ground a bit. Enough about this eccentric girl-woman! Can we get back to the James & Lydia story, please?
However I'm looking forward to Written on Your Skin. Finally it has appeared in my library catalog (though there's always a lag between that and when the book is physically present in the building) and I'm one of the first people to have it on hold.
James's final gesture - yes, making the first move to reconcile with his father, but even more than that, remembering, from a long-ago argument with Lydia, her interest in the Indians of Canada, and proposing a honeymoon there - is one of the most romantic things I've ever read in a romance novel.
The one thing that clunked a little for me was the intro to the next novel's heroine. The hero, Phin, was integrated seamlessly enough, but the scene between Lydia and Mina had so damn much detail about Mina that the gears ground a bit. Enough about this eccentric girl-woman! Can we get back to the James & Lydia story, please?
However I'm looking forward to Written on Your Skin. Finally it has appeared in my library catalog (though there's always a lag between that and when the book is physically present in the building) and I'm one of the first people to have it on hold.
What I'm Reading: finished Skylark
I have to think this isn't one of Beverley's best. I don't need a lot of plot in the books I read, but this one had so little plot movement that even I eventually grew a bit restless. I got the impression Beverley was more invested in the love story of the long-lost heir and the cabin boy (their names have not stuck with me, though I remember they nicknamed one another Othello and Desdemona) than in the central romance.
But as I said, her language is excellent and you get the sense that she really knows her Regency history details. I'll have to do a little backlist research and read one of her better-loved books.
But as I said, her language is excellent and you get the sense that she really knows her Regency history details. I'll have to do a little backlist research and read one of her better-loved books.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
What I'm Reading: March
Geraldine Brooks's imagining of what the March father was up to while Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy muddled along in Concord.
Her language is so beautiful. I felt a little pang reading it, because when I originally set out to write historical romance, part of the attraction was the idea of writing in this kind of formal, elaborate language. Then of course I got serious about market research and discovered that hist-rom, these days, is written with sentence fragments, lots of contractions, and other vaguely anachronistic things like the liberal use of sarcasm.
I don't mind that. It's fun to write. But when I come across something like March, written in language that seems really true to the period, I do get a bit wistful.
Anyway it's the best book I've read in a while. Liberal deployment of shame, which always makes me happy, and lots of complex, tangled motivations for major and minor characters. Plus she digs into a theme that I like to visit in my own writing: miscommunication. How an exchange between two people can be understood in radically opposite ("opposite" shouldn't need a modifier, should it? Things are either opposite, or not opposite. There's no "mildly" opposite.) ways.
I'd read Brooks's nonfiction before, but never her fiction. Now I'll have to look up Year of Wonders.
Her language is so beautiful. I felt a little pang reading it, because when I originally set out to write historical romance, part of the attraction was the idea of writing in this kind of formal, elaborate language. Then of course I got serious about market research and discovered that hist-rom, these days, is written with sentence fragments, lots of contractions, and other vaguely anachronistic things like the liberal use of sarcasm.
I don't mind that. It's fun to write. But when I come across something like March, written in language that seems really true to the period, I do get a bit wistful.
Anyway it's the best book I've read in a while. Liberal deployment of shame, which always makes me happy, and lots of complex, tangled motivations for major and minor characters. Plus she digs into a theme that I like to visit in my own writing: miscommunication. How an exchange between two people can be understood in radically opposite ("opposite" shouldn't need a modifier, should it? Things are either opposite, or not opposite. There's no "mildly" opposite.) ways.
I'd read Brooks's nonfiction before, but never her fiction. Now I'll have to look up Year of Wonders.
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