Caveat: I say all this as someone who really, really tries to get things right. Which is why I’m in England on a research trip right now. And I know that sounds sexy, but what it means is that I spent two hours today taking literally hundreds of photographs of the period maps in Bristol’s City Museum, and I will spend the vast majority of tomorrow at the Bristol Records Office, reading the City Recorder’s notebooks and notes from the Petty Sessions for the years in question. It’s why I spend hours with the Oxford English Dictionary and the Oxford Historical Thesaurus in front of me when I’m in the revision stage, checking hundreds of words; and why I ask Franzeca Drouin to look over my manuscripts for a second eye to accuracy once I’ve given it my very best shot, because I know I still miss stuff.

(Caveat the second: In my upcoming book, my heroine wears night-rails not made from linen. But she has them specially made for a particular purpose; in fact, she usually wears linen. As I found a few records of night-rails of non-linen-fabric for the super-wealthy, this fell into the category of historically possible attire, although it’s not historically average. She could have done so. She was motivated to do so. It fit the story for her to do so.)

In any event, Kalen makes the following assertion:

To me, it seems ridiculous to even bother writing “historical fiction” (be it romance, mystery, whathaveyou) if the “historical” part is optional.

I don’t think that the “historical” part of my books is “optional.” I work very, very hard at it. But I also don’t think that the history is the point of my books, either. Or, rather: I think the past is a vehicle for the present.

When Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter, he wasn’t writing an indictment of Puritan hypocrisy. When Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible, he wasn’t trying to villify the people who ran the Salem Witch trials. And I am not trying to say that I am the next Hawthorne or Miller. But neither Hawthorne nor Miller were “ridiculous” even though they weren’t always historically accurate, and were not striving for historical accuracy. It would be bizarre to condemn The Crucible on the grounds that it was a wallpaper historical courtroom drama. That’s because Hawthorne and Miller weren’t trying to write period pieces. They were using the past as a safe space to discuss the present.

I write in the late 1830s/early 1840s. I do so not because I am completely enamored of early Victorian times, or because I think it is sexy or because I think that it has pretty clothing (because, actually, the clothing of the era is quite ugly). I’ve explained this elsewhere in greater detail, but I write in a time period where everything is changing: the notion of society, the meaning of community, even what things have value. Towns are breaking up; the industrial revolution is hitting hard, and nobody knows what tomorrow will look like. It’s a time of enormous uncertainty.

In other words, it sounds a lot like modern times.

Today, we know that the industrial revolution wasn’t as horrible as some feared (Mr. Milan, who is a Luddite, will contest this). We know that the democratization of society and the erosion of class boundaries was a good thing. We know that giving women more freedom worked out okay. It didn’t destroy the family. It didn’t lead to anarchy. My readers know that; I know that. And so the historical setting is a safe place to explore what it means when society, culture, community, and even basic notions of value all change drastically, with that unknown future hovering on the horizon, waiting to swallow your child’s inheritance.

I do a lot of research–hundreds of hours for every book. When departing (or even appearing to depart, which is the bigger problem) from history, I agonize over the questions for weeks. I care about being historically accurate, to the extent that it is consistent with the story I am trying to tell. But I’m not ashamed to admit that if it comes down to a question between the accuracy of the history, and the theme and message and feel of my book for the modern reader, I will pick the theme and message and feel of my book every single time.

I’m not writing period pieces. And that’s not ridiculous.

At the time I made the promise, it made sense.  I only had about 5,000 words left to write (ha ha ha) and most of what I had was fairly clean.  So, no problem–crank through 5,000 words in a few days, and then spend most of the week polishing and bring things together and smoothing motivations into place.  Right?  Right? Ha ha ha.

I’d forgotten that the last 5,000 words are a lot harder than the first 5,000–or even the middle 20,000.  You have to carefully join all these loose ends, clean up all these plot threads.  And then, when you’re writing a scene that’s supposed to be a short little join between the day and the night (so to speak), filling a tiny little gap and explaining how your heroine comes to be in place B, it majorly sucks when something that was a tiny worry, one you thought you just had to smooth over a little bit, turns into something major, something huge.  And you can’t just beat the scene back into place and make it small, because it’s fighting you to be big.  And you know the scene is right-without this, your heroine’s arc just won’t sit right, but dammit, it is a novella, there wasn’t going to be room for your heroine to have much of a character arc.

Too bad.  She’s got one now.

And all those tiny edits I’d dropped into the first chapter for fun last night suddenly make sense.  Stupid subconscious.  Why do you do this to me?

I started yesterday with around 3,000 words to go.  I wrote 2,000 words.  Now I have 4,000 words left to go.

But this is a year when I’m going to see words that I have written first hit print.  And that means that not only do I need to write, I need to think about promotion.  I need to think about updates to my website, guest blogging, bookmarks, giveaways, newsletters, and book trailers.  In some small part, I look at these things–and some of the associated expenses and I cringe.  One question I ask myself is, is all this really worth it?  Everyone is making book trailers, and yet even the most-played trailers have youtube hit counts in the low hundreds.  Nothing that I can do stands out.  Funny book trailers have been done.  Live-action book trailers have been done.  Rap book trailers have been done, and besides, my book is set in the early Victorian era and I’d hate to get everyone’s panties in an anachronistic twirl before my book comes out.

Then there’s the website.  If you build it, they will come.  If you want them to come more than once, you have to update it.  Not just once, but regularly.  Of course, every author now knows you have to update your website monthly, and so we’re all fighting amongst ourselves for that rare spot, where we are the ones that readers choose to visit.

So here’s one unrealistic goal for the year:  I want to do things that have never been done before–at least as far as romance novel promotion goes.  And I want to do it in a way that leaves me plenty of time to do what’s most important:  writing the best books that I can.

And the good news is, I’m going to be unveiling Part One of Courtney’s evil master plan soon.  Very soon.  Any guesses as to what it might be?  And what would you want to see a romance author doing?

Yes, you.

Go to your store.  Go to Amazon.  Go anywhere that sells awesome books, and buy one of the best historicals available.  That would be, for those of you who don’t know yet, Sherry Thomas’s incredible Delicious.  I was lucky enough to win an ARC, and I avoided everything else for several blissful hours to devour Sherry’s sophomore debut.  Private Arrangements was awesome, but I have no vocabulary for how good Delicious is.  It’s hot, emotional, funny, and it made me very, very hungry.  I loved Stuart–a true alpha male, in every excellent sense of the word and none of the stupid, bumbling ones–and Verity with a burning passion.  Seriously–buy a copy for the plane ride to Dallas.  You won’t regret this one.  Except after you finish it and curl into a little ball, hitting yourself over your head for your own inadequacy.

I am going to go face out the copies of Delicious in the airport bookstore; you are going to buy this book and read it.