‘ve mentioned before that this is something like a vacation for me. As in, I don’t have to work. I decided to take advantage of this not-working time by doing something even more fun. In this case, that means: Going to London.

So far, I’ve hit up Fortnum & Mason’s and Hatchard’s (they’re right next door to each other), two shops where my characters might have visited. I’ve visited Hyde Park and gone boating on the Serpentine. My characters might well have done those things as well. I’ve had scones and clotted cream and tea (in the US, scones are typically quick breads: raised with baking powder or baking soda. Of course, my novel is set in 1840, and bicarbonate of soda was only just beginning to make a splash then. So I try to get the scones here that are yeast-raised, because those are closer to period).
The trip isn’t long enough to do all the things I want to do. I want to visit the town where my hero grew up and spend days sitting in a coffee shop, listening to people talk, so that I can get a feel for the local accent. I want to visit Cambridge, and maybe go to Brighton. I also want to go to Scotland and Ireland. But the truth of the matter is that there is no way to visit the England my characters lived in. I am, ostensibly, doing “research”–but how much research can I really do?

London is considerably cleaner now than it was in those days. Coal is a heating method of the past today, and tomorrow–literally tomorrow–they’re going to ban smoking in bars and restaurants. Streets are paved and regularly cleaned. Horses make guest appearances on Rotten Row in Hyde Park, but they’re generally a vehicle of the past. Not all the changes have been good: I was ejected from Hyde Park yesterday as they investigated a bomb scare. Even in the social unrest that accompanied the 1840s, the potential for significant loss of life was never so grave.

Nonetheless, I’d still rather live now than in the 1840s. I suspect there are very few people who would go back in time–not even to the times where they would be waited on hand and foot. So what is it that we find so compelling about that historical period? Is it escapism? Is it an attempt to live in the past? Or is it something else entirely?

If you dig historical romance, why do you think it is that you like it? And where would you most like to go to perform your “research”?

‘ve been thinking about the various ways that people can be internally fucked up. I’ve seen quite a few of these in romance novels, although they’re relatively rare.

One of the more common fucked-up tropes is the man or the woman who was physically (or sometimes verbally) abused by a husband, a father, a mother. I have never, ever seen a portrayal of that abuse that accurately mirrors abuse in reality. Maybe someone out there can point to a book that does abuse right, but I doubt it.

There are two things that set romance-abuse, at least those that I’ve read, apart from the cycle of abuse in real life, and one other thing that I’ve seen half the time. First, in the romance land, the abuser is all bad through and through. He (and I use “he” because it’s rare that a woman is portrayed as an abuser) is always evil. He’s verbally cruel. He beats with impunity, thinks the child/wife has the devil in him. He feels neither shame nor guilt about his actions. He never promises not to do it again. He never breaks down and cries. He never says he can’t help it. He’s just bad. This is almost universally true–can anyone think of a story where it’s otherwise?

Second, in the romance world, the abused person always hates the abuser. Often, the abuse explains why the hero can’t trust people–because he never knew love, and because he doesn’t believe in it.

A third thing crops up sometimes in romance novels (but not always) and nearly always in real life: the abused person believes the abuse is his or her fault, and that if only he’d done the right thing–if only he’d brought his beer faster, if only he’d kept his mouth shut, if only he’d managed better–it wouldn’t have happened.

Unfortunately, in real life, abuse is not so clean. For a number of reasons, I’ve been thinking about domestic violence lately. Domestic violence cases are really, really hard to prosecute, because the spouse will almost never testify. In some cases, it’s fear. But in many cases, it’s because the woman in question (or the man–women can, and sometimes are, the abusers) believes that she’s in love, that he loves her, and that if only she could just get it right the next time, it’ll stop.

Abusers often believe they love their victims. They’ll beat their wives and, the next day, go out and buy her expensive gifts, treat her lovingly, apologize profusely and say it’ll never happen again. Abuse is hell, both for the abuser and the abused. It’s a cycle, and it’s a dark, dark cycle for both parties. Not that I’m trying to justify the abuser at all; there’s no excuse for that sort of behavior. But we can understand the behavior. Abusers aren’t inhuman. They are just very, very fucked up. Abusers very rarely take pleasure in causing others pain. They lash out, and quite often they feel incredible remorse. They just keep doing it.

It’s one of the most horrific parts of our society, and it’s something I’ve never seen a historical novel grapple with: abuse isn’t just about physical pain and lacking control of your life. It’s about women who believe they love a man, men who believe they love a woman, and escalating violence that has no rational justification. Abusers aren’t all bad, and they aren’t inhuman inflicters of violence. In fact, that’s part of what makes it so horrific. It’s easy to walk away from the devil. It’s hard when you care about him, and when he can be so wonderful one minute and then turn into a demon the next, and afterwards he sobs his heart out and says he’s sorry and says he’ll never hit you again and it was a mistake.
I’ve never seen a romance novel grapple with this (admittedly, I read mostly historicals). There are novels that deal with abuse, but I’ve never seen one delve into the ins and outs of truly abusive relationships.

And I’m wondering: why is that? Or am I wrong?
Part of it, I think, is that it’s really hard to save a character–save both characters–who is that fucked up.

As we have long discovered in our society.

  have just registered for RWA Nationals.  Also I have reserved a room at the hotel.  I have now preemptively spent my tax return.

  write historical romance because most of what I read is historical romance. I can count the number of contemporary, non-paranormal authors I’ve read on one hand. And I really haven’t liked many of them (except I liked Toni Blake’s Swept Away, and I adore Jenny Crusie).
Why?

Simple. It’s because contemporary books are that much more likely to be wallbangers. And it’s a function of the time period. Here’s how it works. In order to interest your readers, your heroine is going to have to want something. What? I don’t know. Maybe she needs to pay her rent. Maybe she’s got a kid that needs a father. Who knows?

Now, there are one of two possibilities. 1. She does not need the man to help her with her problem. 2. She does.

Of course, it’s always possible that HE’LL have a problem and SHE’LL need to help him. Which is always fun, but it rarely occurs. But let’s assume that she’s got the problem. It’s a romance, and so he’s going to have to get involved somehow. And he’s supposed to be sexy, so we have to assume that eventually he helps her sort the problem out.

At this point, I throw the book against the wall and shout at the heroine, “STOP BEING SO NEEDY!” I hate needy women. I hate women who can’t solve their own problems. I hate the “man takes over and solves everything” ending. I especially hate it when she tries to get it right, but fails for two thirds of the book, and then BAM! He waves his right big toe.
This happens. A lot.
I hate it.

Also I hate it when they’re barely getting along and then they resolve all their differences and he says, “Marry me, my sweetest!” and she says, “Of course!” I feel like I’m looking at five years to a divorce, tops, and it lends a bitter note to the saccharine ending.
Now, in historical periods, there are a lot of things that a woman just can’t do, and so she does actually need men, at least if she doesn’t want to be a total social recluse. In fact, she can be incredibly independent and way ahead of her time, while still needing to rely a little bit on a man.
So that’s why I like historicals. Because the women can be smart and independent–at least in the historical sense–and still not make me want to shake them until their teeth rattle out.
What about you?

here are some thoughts which strike me as entirely anachronistic when I read them in romance novels. The reason they strike me as such has to do with another major not-quite-hobby of mine, which is a study of the common law. I’m by no means an expert, but I know who the experts are in this area, and I’ve read a bunch of stuff by most of them.

Now, you’re thinking–all I need to know about property law is that some estates are entailed, and other estates are not. Nothing else matters for my plot. Right?

Wrong. The reason you need to know more is that our subtle understanding of what is bound up in the concept of the word “mine” has changed significantly over the last few centuries. In order to explain what I mean, I need to tell you what “mine” means in modern times. It’ll all sound second nature to you, and you’ll wonder what I’m talking about. And then I’ll tell you what “mine” used to mean, and how it has changed, and suddenly, you’ll start reading books and saying, “Gosh, that’s anachronistic, too.”

These days, we regularly accept the following formulations: “I can do X to thing A, therefore I must own thing A.” And its inverse: “I own thing A, therefore I should be allowed to do thing X to it.” This is becaus our definition of property has devolved into one that’s purely functional: Property ownership is nothing other than a series of rights that you have. So if I say “it’s my house,” what I really mean is that I have the right to invite people in and kick them out and paint it yellow and plant dahlias, unless I live in a snarky neighborhood.
This aspect of ownership bleeds into the way we think of the world around us. Take, for instance, the expression, “it’s my life; I can do what I want.” Implicit in that concept is the idea that ownership gives means rights.
This is a modern conception of ownership. Centuries ago, property ownership was vastly different. Instead of rights that attached to property, you had lords who granted you things in return for the appropriate homage. (If you go back far enough, there wasn’t even any remedy for lords who failed to deliver.) There was no concept of property ownership, just servitude and sufferance.

The Regency period is a period of flux between the old concept of property, which was something closer to a bargain between lord and vassal, and the new concept of property, which was closer to a bundle of rights.

So take something like: “It’s my life; I can do what I want with it.”

This presupposes that ownership means you can do what you want with things. But ownership didn’t always meant that. Lords could do what they wanted by right; everyone else was allowed to do things at the lord’s sufferance. Not only could people in Regency eras rarely do what they wanted; the idea that ownership meant rights to dispose of as you would made no sense.

Or, for instance, take the idea, today relatively firmly entrenched, that men in that time period owned their wives. What do we mean by that? We mean that men had rights to do things to their wives, like beat them, or take away their children, and that wives often lacked those rights themselves. But this is a very modern statement of the matter. As women’s rights were understood in those times, the wife was her husband’s vassal, with concomitant rights and responsibilities. (Notice, if you read Mary Wollstonecraft, that she never uses the modern formulation. Not once.)

Why does this matter? It doesn’t, really. But it does, because there are some sentiments that we express today as ownership, but which regency people would express differently. And in cases like, “It’s my X, I can do whatever I want,” it’s most blatant.

o Jacqueline wants to know why we’re obsessed with talking about large members.

I have a confession to make. Whatever you want to call it–penmanship or the motion of the ocean–matters most.

But size does matter. And I don’t just mean on the extremes–too small and too large are both uncomfortable. But there’s a difference between average and large. And, if both men are equally good lovers (and, if he cares enough and you’re willing to tell him what you like, and he’s sufficiently creative to surprise you, there’s no reason he can’t be), large is better than average.

It just is.

That being said, penmanship is far more important. And penmanship–well, let’s put it this way. If you have fingers and a tongue, you can exert yourself enough to do fine.

  think that to be a romance writer, you need to have a fundamental optimism in your soul. And I also think that in order to have that, you have to be a genuinely happy person. I don’t mean that you have to be perky, or a Pollyanna. I do mean that you have to enjoy yourself from time to time, and take joy in life from time to time. Not always. But enough that you believe the universe contains good things for everyone, if only they would come into place.

But in order to write an interesting story, I have to write about a messier world than I’ve ever lived in. I mean, I can’t really complain about my life. There have been ups and downs–plenty of them. But in all honesty, as far as I can tell, basically my life is a series of events in which I decide I want something, I put in some effort, and I get it. I’m well aware that this puts me way ahead of the ballgame.

You have to write what you know. Of course, I’ve never lived in the Regency period. I’ve never waltzed. I’ve never even worn a corset. And while I went through a period of teenage angst, I’ve been basically happy. So I’ve been learning to write mountains out of my molehills.

It’s vastly entertaining, but in many respects, it really makes me think about a lot of things I haven’t thought of in a while.

or an aspiring writer of romance, I have to admit that I have a streak of virulent practicality. One of the things I’m doing right now is figuring out what to engrave on a wedding ring.

So far as I can tell, wedding ring engravings are designed to make everyone else’s eyes roll. Either they’re too generic, e.g., “one love will bind us together.” Or they’re too personal, like “For my little flower of passion.” In any event, I get embarrassed just reading what other people have chosen. I can’t wear these! This completely explains Celtic love knots. No need for florid prose; just a symbol. I like symbols. Maybe I should choose one. We’d refer to ourselves in text as the “Couple Formerly Known as Unmarried.”

So Prince. I like it.

But the other option is to try and think of an engraving that actually isn’t cloyingly sweet or endearingly vomitous. I’m thinking about “Pass the salt.” What do y’all think?

  have to admit, I love a good tortured hero. In my fantasies I do, I mean. But after my first tortured boyfriend, though, I said to myself, “Hmm. There’s a reason torture’s outlawed under the Geneva convention.” And since then I’ve stuck to guys with a little less drama, and it’s worked out admirably.
So what type do you love in fiction but hate in fact?

‘ve deactivated the math module. For those of you who were having trouble before, can you see if you’re still having trouble now?

One possibility seems to be that the math module not only screens out people who didn’t pass math; it screens out people who are behind some kind of a firewall. If you were one of the people who contacted me about not being able to comment, can you see if you can do so now?

EDIT: Stupidly, I have realized that if you can’t comment, you still can’t comment. Right. So I wouldn’t know. So if you can’t comment, let me know here. Thanks!