RAtR: Regency Romance

Read Around the Rainbow

As you’re probably aware, #RAtR is a blogging project I am doing with a few friends who also write LGBTQIA romance. You can find everyone by clicking here or on the image to the right.

This month we are writing about Regency Romance– whether we love it or hate it and why so many people love to both read and write it. This is bang in the middle of my area of interest as both a reader and writer of historical romance.

Firstly then, when, and what, was the Regency? In 1811, George III was finally declared permanently incapable of carrying out his royal duties. His eldest son, Prince George, ‘Prinny’, the next in line to the throne, was therefore installed as Regent. He was a fashion-conscious social butterfly who loved the adulation of his court, was swayed by flattery, resented his parents in the fine tradition of England’s Hanoverian Kings and was moody and mercurial. Between 1811 and 1820 when he became King in his own right is technically the Regency era. However,  socially and culturally the term is used for the period from about 1795 to the ascension of Queen Victoria in 1837. The romance trope sits squarely in this period.

Why do we find it so attractive? My personal feeling is that it’s all down to Jane Austen. Generations of people grew up reading her model of middle class Georgian England. She centered her heroines in the story and we only get a frisson of the messy, dangerous rest of it… Mr Darcy going to London’s stews to find Lydia in Pride and Prejudice (1813); Captain Wentworth taking Ann Elliott’s party to Lyme to meet his friend, maimed aboard ship and living in poverty (Persuasion 1817); Marianne Dashwood falling for a roue and being abandoned in Sense and Sensibility (1811). 

Georgette Heyer and Julia Quinn and their colleagues picked up the trope and ran with it. Sometimes the books aren’t even dated to a particular year and the historical period is contextualised for us through high waisted dresses, being presented at court, going to a  ball, the love interest meeting his friends at Whites, getting vouchers for Almack’s, or having rooms at the Albany. If every hero in every book really had rooms at the Albany, they’d be queuing five deep around the block to get in. 

When we chose this topic, Nell had a minor wobble, because she famously doesn’t read series’ and is dubious about historical romance in general. Several of us yelled at her about K J Charles and Cat Sebastian until she gave in; I recommended she try one of my favourites, A Seditious Affair by K J Charles. A dour book shop owner and publisher of seditious leaflets falls for a Home Office official who is tasked with suppressing dissent. Learn about the Cato Street Plot here! It’s the second of a trilogy called The Company of Gentlemen, which each focus on a different couple in a group of friends although I think it stands happily alone. The trilogy slides seamlessly into the London of it’s time, with Molly Houses, lamp-boys leading you astray in the fog, not having enough coal for a bath, being transported for seditious dissent and freed slaves; alongside clubs, tailors, country houses and banging unsuitable people in curtained alcoves. I’ll be interested to see whether Nell read it and what she made of it!

At the moment I’m reading The Oak and the Ash by Annick Trent, a new to me author. It’s part of a loosely connected series and this one is set at the end of the 1790s. So far I haven’t been able to pin an actual date. The whole feeling of it is Regency though, which is what I meant about it sometimes being  a trope rather than a precise dating. In this story, a surgeon and a valet slowly fall in love after the valets employer — happily in an open marriage with a wife who has a lover as he has his — is injured in a duel. I’m looking forward to exploring more of the collection. It gives a gritty portrayal of the life of ordinary people, with a seditious newspaper, a reading club and the valet-protagonist fascinated with meteorological observations.

I suppose I should also hat-tip myself — The Flowers of Time, my own lesbian/non-binary/bisexual romance is set in the 1780s. It’s firmly pre-regency — we are still worrying about American Independence and the French Revolution — but  we do get a flash forward at the end, with Jones and Edie watching Queen Victoria’s coronation and talking about taking the train. I think we forget people lived long and rich lives either side of the periods we set our stories.

I also want to hat-tip the lovely Ellie, my fellow RAtR blogger, who has a collection of Regency stories that I have to my shame not read. I am actually on holiday this week — I’m writing this on the plane, get me! — and I plan to rectify that as soon as I hit the lounger by the pool this afternoon.

So that’s the post! Please do check out what my colleagues have to say on the subject!

(Due to my extreme inability to use Jetpack on my phone and my refusal to bring my laptop with me on holiday I am having trouble with inserting links, for which I apologise -the below links go to last month’s posts.)

To read what my Read Around the Rainbow colleagues have written about Dark Romance, click through below!

Nellhttps://elliethomasromance.wordpress.com/ IrisOfelia Grand : Lillian Francis : Fiona Glass : Amy Spector : Ellie Thomas : Holly Day : K. L. Noone : Addison Albright

RAtR: Kind of, anyway

Read Around the Rainbow

As you’re probably aware, #RAtR is a blogging project I am doing with a few friends who also write LGBTQIA romance. You can find everyone by clicking here or on the image to the right.

Hi! Hello! The observant among you will have noticed I have been absent from RAtR, and pretty much everywhere else, for the best part of a year. In that time I’ve sent out a couple of newsletters I think and put one or two things on my FB group. But essentially I’ve been focusing on family.

Littlest became very ill with a respiratory infection last September. She was in hospital for five months and became critically ill the week before Christmas. We prepared for the worst; and then the day before Christmas Eve she didn’t quite sit up and demand a bacon sandwich. But she pulled round very quickly and was discharged to home in the second week of January. We knew we were on borrowed time and amended her Advanced Care Plan accordingly.

Health and Social Care pulled a number of rabbits out of their various hats and we had an incredible amount of help put in place at home. She was largely confined to bed initially, but then towards the end of February she improved further and was able to get out and about a couple of times a week. She thoroughly enjoyed it, as she was so bored in bed. We focused on ‘quality over quantity’ and organised for her to go back to school for a few hours a week.

Luck was always against us though, and at the end of June, she passed away of COVID. It was quick, at home and surrounded by family who loved her. She was fifteen.

We are now at the end of August and I am just beginning to realise she’s not coming back.  I lie in bed at night, and in my head I imagine she is asleep next door, and I can hear the quiet thump of the oxygen condenser and swsssh of the ventilator. That any moment she will mutter in her sleep or call out for one of us to come and reposition her, or pick up the cuddly toys she has thrown overboard.

It is inconceivable to me that she is gone, although we knew that this moment would happen. The house is bare without her mobility aids and when the team came to remove the ceiling hoists, I cried. If we go out, I still rush, and check my watch, and count minutes off on my head so we won’t be back late for her carers. Our grocery shopping no longer has regular bumper-packs of wet-wipes and hand sanitiser, or tins and tins of tinned fruit and yoghurt and other things to put in her tube feeds. The carpets are exponentially cleaner because she is not tracking half the countryside in on the wheels of the wheelchair. Our washing machine use has halved.

I cannot watch TV programs with bereavements, or ones with young children who giggle when their parents boop their nose. Watching, I get a physical pressure in my chest, a stone sitting on my heart and I cannot bear it.

My daughter is dead, and nothing will ever be the same again. I feel guilt, that perhaps I didn’t do enough. I constantly feel I’ve forgotten something; that ‘Oh shit I left the baby at the Post Office!’ feeling. But there is no baby now and the Post Office has been permanently closed.

A part of me is relieved. Relieved for her, that she no longer has to struggle. But also selfishly relieved for myself that I no longer have to write emails and make phonecalls and fight and fight for her care and her health and her education. I am tired. We are both so tired. If you’ve never cared for anyone long-term, you have no idea how tired you can be.

For the first month, we both just wandered around in a daze. We had nightmares, we had insomnia, we slept at odd times. Now, at the end of the second month we are sleeping better. I am dragging myself out of bed each morning instead of staying in my pyjamas all day. We are trying to keep occupied. If I’m not occupied, I seem to go into a fugue state where all I do is stare at the wall and feel the enormous weight of my grief, like a horsehair blanket thrown over me, muffling everything in the world.

Writing has been impossible for the last twelve months. I am starting, very slowly, to feel neurons come back online though. Memories I had lost pop up regularly now I have all that extra processing power freed up and can sleep for eight hours a night. I am hoping I might be able to begin to write again soon, but I’m not going to push myself. For once in my life I am going to take the time that I need. That’s why I am writing this instead of the Dark Romance topic. Next month, I hope I can join in with the team and get back on track. 

For their thoughts on Dark Romance, check out their blogs:

To read what my Read Around the Rainbow colleagues have written about Dark Romance, click through below!

Nell IrisOfelia Grand : Lillian Francis : Fiona Glass : Amy Spector : Ellie Thomas : Holly Day : K. L. Noone : Addison Albright

RAtR: After The End

Read Around the Rainbow

As you’re probably aware, #RAtR is a blogging project I am doing with a few friends who also write LGBTQIA romance. You can find everyone by clicking here or on the image to the right.

This isn’t a treatise on dystopian fictions! This month, we are writing about what happens after a writer types THE END in capital letters, centres them, saves the file and posts all over their social media that their masterpiece has finished?

Erm. Well. Lots and lots. And I guess people work in different ways, so this is my own process. I’m looking forward to reading what my #RAtR colleagues do and how their approach differs.

I’m going to assume infinite time, here, rather than working to a deadline, which might mean steps are compressed or jumped.

I write in Scrivenor, usually with the document divided up into chapters or into point of view (POV) which are sometimes the same thing. I colour-code my character points of view so if I want to I can narrow down my view to see which part of the story individual characters are narrating. I try and write between one and two thousand words per session (every day if I’m on form), and at the beginning of each session I go back and read what I wrote the day before and tweak it.

 The first thing to do once I get to the end of the story is go right back to the beginning and search for every instance of four stars, ****, which I use to leave myself notes.

Usually past-Ally says things like ****PUT IN MORE SEX HERE or ****WORK OUT BACKGROUND AND INSERT HERE, or ****LOOK UP LENGTH OF CHAMPS ELYSEES, or ****MAKE CHARACTER MORE LIKEABLE HE’S A SHIT-HEAD or even just a bare ****400 MORE WORDS HERE. Present-Ally is always absolutely delighted to find these little reminders of how slack past-Ally has been.

Once I’ve done this and I’m happy with what I’ve got, I export the document to Word. With some judicious formatting, that turns it into a coherent draft that I can send off to my lovely beta readers with chapter headings, a rough blurb at the beginning and an index. Usually I go through before I do that and try and do line edits to remove instances of words like just, then, really and my subconscious’ current favourite, a bit. Sometimes past-Ally doesn’t do that though and I include a note to my betas to say please ignore the slacker.

At this point if I’m self-publishing, I make a cover (if I haven’t already) and put the book up for preorder on the various ebook platforms.

If I’m working with a publisher (shout-out to JMS Books!) I fill in a blurb form and I look at the stock photo sites they use to find a few images that I feel are suitable and fill in a cover form describing what I would like.

Once the beta notes are back, I go through the manuscript and take the beta feedback on board. Then I do a rough proof read.

Then if it’s a publisher-book, I send the manuscript, the blurb form and the cover form off to the publisher, who sends me a contract to sign digitally (after careful reading of course!). If it’s a self-published book, I send it off to my editor.

Then, either way I’m working, I make a load of promotional images in Canva and I put together a document with various social media posts I can use for marketing. The first line, a kiss snippet, that sort of thing. I sometime create posts and visuals with a character sketch. I update my website and social media headers with graphics of the new book.

Once I have a cover, I put together a media pack, which is basically a document with all the info bloggers and reviewers could need to decide whether they want to host a release announcement or request an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC). So, publication date, ISBN number, links to where it can be pre-ordered/bought, keywords, a tag-line, the blurb, the cover, and perhaps an excerpt. Oh, and a little biography at the bottom with my social links.

Then I decide how skint I am and either pay for a blog tour, someone to approach reviewers and bloggers for me; or I contact them myself.

All this time I am writing every morning, working on my next story. And I am doing a bit of social media activity to remind readers I exist, plus sending out my newsletter. And I am maybe tweaking my Amazon Ads and my Facebook Ads if I have them running.

After two or three weeks, then, I get the first round of edits back from my editor. I go over the manuscript and accept or reject her corrections and suggestions. She does a light proof at this point and leaves me sarcastic comments if she finds anything that doesn’t make sense. I do even more proofing and take her advice about the things that don’t make sense, leaving her equally sarcastic comments. Then I send the manuscript back.

We do that a couple of times more and when I’m happy with it I listen to it through using the Word Read Aloud function. It’s much the best way to catch spelling errors and autocorrects that have slipped by. Then, I turn it in to an ARC copy and I send it out to my ARC readers and any reviewers who have requested it and I load it up on to the ebook sales sites that I have put the preorders up on.

That’s it, basically. I spend far more time on the ‘after THE END’ part than I do writing. It’s so easy to get sucked into the marketing, social media and tweaking advertisements or your website part of the cycle than it is to knuckle down and actually produce words. I’m not unusual in this. I haven’t read any of my colleagues’ pieces at the time of writing this, but I bet my sizeable arse that they are saying much the same thing.

Obviously I publish with a small press; if you work with a larger press or are traditionally published with one of the big five, the process is different—much more drawn out for a start. However, I’m very happy with my hybrid set-up, with some of my work being all my own responsibility and some being partly the publisher. Unless you’re a mega-seller these days, you do most of your own marketing as a writer, however you’re published.

So…have a look at what my colleagues have written here!

To read what my Read Around the Rainbow colleagues have written about seasonal reads, click through below!

Nell IrisOfelia Grand : Lillian FrancisFiona Glass : Amy Spector : Ellie Thomas : Holly Day : K. L. NooneAddison Albright

RAtR: As a reader, what’s more important to you, the story itself or the way it’s told?

I’m late to this one as Mr AL and I are trying, for the fifth time in twelve months, to have a holiday that doesn’t end in rearranging because we got COVID (May22), me turning yellow with Gallbladder issues (Also May 22) or flying home because Littlest is admitted to intensive care (Oct 22 and Jan 23). So far we are on day #3 and we’re good, though, so I feel I can turn my concentration to the topic!

For me, I think my enjoyment of a story is a mixture of plot and presentation. I could end the post very satisfactorily there and leave you hanging :). However for example… I will forgive eg proofing errors and awkward grammar if the plot is sufficiently gripping. I find it hard to read through those and concentrate on the story if it’s not got me by the heart. And clunky plotting is going to stop me reading even if the prose is lyrical in of itself. So I guess we conclude that plot is more important for me.

I’m not going to give examples of books I haven’t got on with, because that’s mean and there’s a strong personal preference involved. However, I’ve got some other preferences in my reading that I occasionally get completely turned around by and then question my whole self :).

For example…I would say I don’t usually like stories written in the first person. But I LOVE S. E. Harmon’s Spookology series. And Shattered Glass by Dani Alexander. And the Dalí series by E. M. Hamill. They are all extremely well told.

And I would say I don’t like stories with neo-pronouns because my brain just has a sort of wobble and takes ages to process them, despite being quite happy using them IRL. However, I’m just re-reading Foz Meadows A Strange and Stubborn Endurance and I love it. And of course, there’s The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin, which is one of my desert island books.

And I don’t like Epistolary novels, which is ironic given I’m maybe writing one ATM and also that I love A Land So Wild by Elyssa Warkentin.

So… I think we can say it’s all about the story itself for me.

Finally, here’s an image of my current view.

If you’d like to read what the other members of the webring are writing about this month, for now please click on the #RAtR link on the right and follow the links to their blogs. I’m writing on my phone and adding all the links is a bit beyond me right now, although I’ll have another go later on.

#ReadAroundtheRainbow: Writing advice I take with a grain of salt

Read Around the Rainbow

As you’re probably aware, #RAtR is a blogging project I am doing with a few friends who also write LGBTQIA romance. You can find everyone by clicking here or on the image to the right.

This month, we’re all blogging about writing advice we take with a grain of salt… and…I’m not sure about this one! Do I say I rigidly follow all the rules? And have people think I’m a formulaic work-to-rule sort of writer? Or do I say I pick and choose what received advice I follow, and have people think I’m arrogant and self-important and not a proper writer?

It’s a dilemma! Probably the first advice I should actually listen to is to ignore imposter syndrome 😊.

In all honesty though, there’s so much completely conflicting advice out there for people who write, whether they’re published or not:

 Write every day. It doesn’t matter if you write every day. Attend a writing group. Write alone. Self-edit. Always have an editor. Have lots of social media. Don’t bother with social media. Write different genres under different pen-names. Put everything under one pen name. Hone your skills in fanfiction. Take a course. Self-publish. Look for a publisher. Get an agent. Don’t bother with an agent.

And Oxford commas…well. That’s how decades long feuds begin.

I think the only thing you can say for certain is that what suits one person won’t suit another and the less you get hung up on all the dos and don’ts, the happier and more confident you’ll be.

I’m definitely not confident enough to self-edit for example. But I know several people who do, very competently. The writing every day thing…well. My life is very, very fragmented right now and that’s impossible for me. But it doesn’t make me any less of a writer. Everything is still ticking away inside my head and when I do sit down with my laptop I often find it springs more fully formed onto the page than it does if I’ve been writing every day. Not always! But sometimes.

So, I’d have to say that the only thing I’d take with a grain of salt is to follow all the advice you’re given. Pick what works for you and have the confidence to say ‘I tried that and it was rubbish for me, it didn’t work’.

It’s not a competition, there are no rules that dictate conformity or success. If you’re happy as you’re actually writing and happy with what you’re creating, then…that’s working. You’re a successful writer.

Here’s everyone else who wrote this month. Click through to read what they have to say!

Nell Iris : Ofelia Grand : Lillian Francis : Fiona Glass : Amy Spector : Ellie Thomas : Holly Day : K. L. Noone : Addison Albright