British Accents now and then

One of the things I love about working with Callum Hale on my audiobooks is his ability to throw himself into pretty much any British accent and bring the character to life. To my British ear each of the people I’ve created sound exactly as I’ve envisaged them as he brings them off the page.

I asked him to make Rob, from Inheritance of Shadows ‘less ooh-arr’ and he toned the accent down so to me at least, Rob doesn’t sound so much like a heavy-handed son of the Somerset soil. And I wanted Will Grant in the 1920s London Trilogy to sound more like Lord Peter Wimsey. Callum obliged, perfectly. (These are my two favourite of all my characters, ever, incidentally).

The question I’m always asking myself about my writing though, is how right can I get it? I want the history in my books to be accurate, unless I’m deliberately twisting the universe out of true with magic. I think this is the same question historians have to ask themselves about looking at anything in the past. We are both looking at things through our own rose-tinted spectacles, coloured with our own experiences and social expectations. My characters in these books grew up in Victorian England. What did they really think about the Empire? What did they talk about in the pub? What did they really sound like? How did they really smell? We’re fudging it, the whole lot. Historians and archaeologists because of lack of data. And writers because of lack of data and because we don’t want our main characters to be unsympathetic to modern audiences.

Anyway…during one or other of my late-night sessions randomly browsing the web, I came across this programme about Edwardian accents. A regional English language specialist in Germany during the First World War, a real-life Professor Higgins, suddenly realised he had a huge pool of untapped research material in the German army’s British prisoners of war. In this documentary you can actually listen to their voices.

I was very interested in how the modern specialists in the programme say the regional accents of the past are broader in the recordings than they are now. It’s as if the rising tide of London-speak has swept the broad vowels of the regional accents back from the centre of the country, into the more remote west of England. So although to me, Rob sounds about right, a farm labourer from Somerset who’s self-educated and likes to read, to his contemporaries he’d probably have sounded out of place. You can listen to Callum’s reading of him here, in the first chapter of Inheritance of Shadows.

I think, listening to those long-ago voices in the programme, it’s important to remember these men were prisoners. That’s one of the filters we mustn’t discard. Were they doing this work in the language lab out of the kindness of their hearts? Because they were bored and wanted an occupation? Because they were threatened in to it? Because they were offered extra rations or privileges? Are these their actual accents? Or are they performative, a joke on the professor? They’re immensely touching, whatever their origin and I hope you enjoy it.

You can buy the 1920s London audiobooks at Authors Direct.

Lost in Time, Shadows on the Border, The Hunted and the Hind by A. L. Lester. Narrated by Callum Hale.

Announcing The Quid Pro Quo

So, here’s some news! The Quid Pro Quo will be out on the 20th November and here’s the cover and an excerpt!

It’s the second in the Bradfield trilogy following The Fog of War and stars Walter, Sylvia’s nurse-friend; and Simon, a local detective who visits Bradfield to investigate a murder.

The Quid Pro Quo

Village nurse Walter Kennett is content with his makeshift found-family in tiny Bradfield. However one midsummer morning a body is found floating in the village duck pond, dead by magical means.
Detective Simon Frost arrives in Bradfield to investigate a inexplicable murder. The evidence seems to point to Lucille Hall-Bridges, who lives with doctor Sylvia Marks and nurse Walter Kennett at Courtfield House. Simon isn’t happy—he doesn’t believe Lucy is a murderer but he’s sure the three of them are hiding something. In the meantime, the draw he feels toward Walter takes him by surprise.

Walter is in a dilemma, concealing Sylvia and Lucy’s relationship and not knowing how much to tell Frost about the paranormal possibilities of the murder. He isn’t interested in going to bed with anyone—he’s got a complicated life and has to know someone really well before he falls between the sheets. He’s taken aback by his own attraction to Detective Frost and angry when Frost appears to twist the spark between them to something transactional in nature.

Will Walter be satisfied to stay on the periphery of Lucy and Sylvia’s love affair, a welcome friend but never quite included? Or is it time for him to strike out and embark on a relationship of his own?

The second in the Bradfield trilogy, set in the Border Magic universe. With a transm/m couple. Read The Fog of War first and/or add The Quid Pro Quo to Goodreads.

As Simon was replacing the device on the telephone table a pretty young woman put her head out of a door at toward the end of the hall. “Sylv!” she said, “Do you want tea? I’ve boiled the kettle.” and then when she realised he wasn’t who she thought he was, “Oh, I do beg your pardon! I thought you were Dr Marks!”.

“She’s still in the surgery,” Simon nodded across the hall.

The woman emerged into the hall. “Lucille Hall-Bridges,” she said, extending a hand. “I’m a friend of Sylvia’s. I help with the house.”

Simon took her hand in his. Her grip was sure and warm. “Detective Frost,” he replied. “Nice to meet you, Miss Hall-Bridges. She had a recent bruise running from her jaw to just below her eye, entering the black-and-purple stage.

“I’ve made a pot of tea,” she was saying. “I don’t know whether anyone will want any, but I do like to feel useful and tea is so…normal-making, isn’t it?”

He nodded, slightly bemused at her chatter. “Yes, indeed,” he said. “Very normal.”

She gave a perfunctory tap on the surgery door, opened it and disappeared inside without waiting for a response. “Sylv, Walter, I’ve made tea. Would you and your detective like to come into the drawing room?” Her voice faded, presumably as she joined them in the examination room.

There was a pause. Then, “Oh!” he heard her say. “Oh.” She sounded a little shocked. “What’s happened to her hands?” she asked.

“Scraped on the bottom on the pond I think,” Simon heard Dr Marks say. “She was face-down in the water.”

“Oh.” Miss Hall-Bridges’ voice was small. “Sylvia…there’s…she’s…I can feel…do you think…?” Her voice trailed off and Dr Marks spoke over her, clearly away they might be overhead.

“Let’s not worry about that now, shall we? The policeman is sending her down to Taunton to a postmortem. You go and take the tea-things into the drawing room. We’ll just cover her up.”

The Quid Pro Quo by A. L. Lester. Trans MC, historical, paranormal, 1920s England.

#AmReading

This week, two gay romances, one fantasy, one contemporary, and a contemporary fantasy story with roots set deep in English myth.

Seducing the Sorcerer by Lee Welch

Cover, Seducing the Sorcerer, Lee Welch.

There’s a magic horse that eats eiderdowns. That’s all you should need to know in order to one-click this book. Go and get it now. Immediately.

Other than that…it’s just as beautifully written as Lee Welch’s previous books. The characters are complex and well drawn–Fenn, who’s POV we follow–is an older character in his mid-forties and has fallen on hard times. He’s at the end of his rope when he gets swindled by a farmer he does some work for and is paid with a sackcloth horse. After that his life gets extremely weird.

I loved this whole premise. Fenn is just such a good character. He’s likeable, he’s realistic in that he tries to do the right thing and doesn’t always quite manage it. He makes assumptions and he acts on the spur of the moment and he is tired of fighting for things. He’s also seriously freaked out by magic. The world-building is wonderful–the magic system is there in the background and we pick it up as we go along rather than it being spoon-fed to us. This is my bag, as you are probably aware. The slow-burn romance between Fenn and Morgrim the sorcerer is very well paced and there are political machinations going on behind the scenes that gradually become clear to both the reader and Fenn. I loved their relationship dynamic. Hard recommend!

The Salisbury Key by Harper Fox (audio)

Cover, audiobook, Harper Fox, The Salisbury Key

There’s a lot of pain in this story. Warnings for suicide, grief and the trauma that falls out from them. It’s a long time since I read it and because the audio is much slower than I read myself, I think the grief had much more impact on me. Dan is devastated when his older partner kills himself, and sets himself to find out why through the haze of emotion and guilt he’s surrounded by. He meets a young soldier, Rain, who he has an instant connection with and together they open a can of worms containing biological weapons and evil. It’s a bit of an odd mixture with the archaeology thread, but it works really well and it’s a favourite of mine. The narration is perfect. I loved Rain’s voice in particular. Recommend.

The Green Man’s Heir by Juliet E. McKenna

I came across this via a twitter rec and it’s glorious. The MC is the son of a dryad and a human. He can see supernatural creatures but is not one himself…dryad’s sons are long lived and heal easily, but only their daughters are actual dryads. Our hero, Dan, is an itinerant carpenter, vaguely searching for other men like him–he wants to learn how they cope with living in a modern age of computer ID and registration when they don’t age as swiftly as humans. He has dreams that he interprets as messages from the Green Man, guiding him here and there across the country. In Derbyshire, he stumbles onto a murder that turns out to have a supernatural element and becomes involved with a local estate that has a dragon problem. This is a first in series and I’m about to begin the second. It’s lovely writing…rooted in the countryside and in English myth with likeable, rich characters that kept me turning the pages. Highly recommend.

That’s it for this week!

Audiobooks with new covers now available wide!

I have some very exciting news…all three of the 1920s London books are now available wide in audio with new covers!

You can find most of my audiobooks at my Authors Direct page—all three 1920s London books can be bought for $20!—but they are also available wide at Apple, Hoopla, Scribd, LibroFM, Kobo, Chirp etc. and I think Audible have them on Whispersync—I am perpetually confused by how they work. I know some audio-library services are carrying them too. I hope you enjoy listening to them as much as I’ve enjoyed hearing Callum bring the characters to life!

You can listen to the first half hour of Lost in Time here at Bookfunnel.

Lost in Time

Gruesome murders taking place across 1920s London draw Lew and Alec together through the desolation of the East End and the smoky music clubs of Soho. They both have secrets that could get them arrested or killed. In the middle of a murder investigation that involves wild magic, mysterious creatures and illegal sexual desire, who is safe to trust?

Not Lew, who is struggling to get to grips with life a century before he was born. Or Alec, who wants Lew in his bed, despite liking him for murder.

You can listen to the first half hour of Lost in Time here at Bookfunnel!

Buy Lost in Time from Authors Direct – Buy Elsewhere

#1 in the Lost in Time series. m/m paranormal, historical, romantic suspense of 53,000 words, set in 1920’s London.

Shadows on the Border

In 1920s London Lew and his lover Detective Alec Carter are working out the parameters of their new relationship. Lew is torn between staying in the past and trying to get back to 2016. Alec is wrestling with the idea of being in love with a magician. Meanwhile Alec’s sergeant, Will Grant, is drawn to the mysterious Fenn, a hunter from the Outlands.

Moving through the contrasting rich and poor areas of post-First World War London from West End hotels to the London docklands, the team need to work together to prevent more killings and choose what — and who — they may need to give up to find any kind of peace.

Buy Shadows on the Border from Authors Direct – Buy Elsewhere

#2 in the Lost in Time series. m/m and m/enby paranormal, historical, romantic suspense of 58,000 words set in 1920s London. Sequel to Lost in Time, which should be read first.

The Hunted and the Hind

Inadvertently tumbling through the border into the Outlands after Fenn, Sergeant Will Grant of the Metropolitan Police has spent three months imprisoned by the Frem. When Fenn frees him, they step through the border to the Egyptian desert. It’s a two week ocean-liner journey back to England, with the possibility of magical pursuit. Will the journey give Fenn and Will time to resolve the feelings they have been dancing around since the day they met?

Buy The Hunted and the Hind from Authors Direct – Buy Elsewhere

#3 in the Lost in Time series. m/enby paranormal, historical, romantic suspense of 40,400 words set in 1920s London. Sequel to Lost in Time and Shadows on the Border, which should be read first.

Three audiobook covers, Lost in Time, Shadows on the Border, The Hunted and the Hind.

The Hunted & the Hind: Knitting a universe versus snappy dialogue

Cover, audiobook, The Hunted and the Hind

I thought I’d talk a bit today about the differences between writing historical stories and paranormal stories, with particular reference to The Hunted and the Hind, which is coming soon to audio. Most of my stories have magic and the paranormal in them, but I see myself as being more a historical writer than a fantasy writer—I try and get my history right and then throw in the extra ‘what if’ of the magic.

One of the things I like a great deal about my paranormal universe is that no-one, not even me, knows exactly how everything fits together. This is great as a writer because you can basically darn up plot-holes as you go along, but it is also a bit nerve-wracking, because you can write yourself into those same plot holes and it’s excruciating trying to dig out of them. Someone on twitter asked how I kept track of my magic system a while back and my answer was that I didn’t really, but in my head it looks like a room full of balls of wool and excited kittens. This is still true, although since that conversation I’ve started keeping detailed notes because it was all getting a bit out of hand.

Writing the historical parts of the stories is completely different. I like to have a clear idea of the period I’m writing in—for the 1920s now, I think I’ve got quite a grip on it. I started off with family stories about the period and then did lots of reading around, about specific areas of London, specific things that happened that I wanted to touch my characters in some way. It’s a much more measured approach. I sometimes get sidetracked by research into things that seem to blow up in my mind as immensely important and might only have a sentence in the finished book. In The Flowers of Time, for example, I became obsessed with how to make light in the Himalayas in the 1700s and ended up making not only my own butter-lamps, but my own butter.

For The Hunted and the Hind I got sucked down a sea-travel rabbit-hole that seemed to be endless. The characters take a liner home from Egypt to England and I needed to satisfy myself that I’d got the detail right before I started shoving magical happenings into the story. That seems to be the way it works for me—I get the historical period straight in my mind, I have my characters and then I say ‘what if this happened?’. It’s my own particular version of the writer habit of killing your darlings.

As the writer though, one of the most fun things about the 1920s books is the snippy dialogue between the main characters. It was really nice to get back into that when I began to write again. However, I didn’t want Hunted to be another Alec and Lew book, they’d had their turn and I wanted to focus on Fenn and Will. I ended up cutting quite a bit of Alec and Lew scenes because they were just there so I could write snarky dialogue that ending in shagging. Which is what I have as a deleted scene for you today!

The Hunted and the Hind is coming to audio in the next few weeks, narrated by the inestimable Callum Hale–catch up with the audios of Lost in Time and Shadows on the Border here.

The Hunted and the Hind

#3 in the Lost in Time 1920s series.

Listen to Angel Martinez reading an excerpt for Friday Reading Day.

Deleted Scene from The Hunted and the Hind

“No,” said Alec, very firmly.
“I think you should,” said Lew, mildly. “It would be very helpful.”
“No,” said Alec, again.
“Please?” Lew tried.
Alec sighed. He was going to lose this battle. “Honestly, I have no idea what I’m going to do about it,” he said. “We can’t go on much longer…his mother…,” he trailed off.
“Well, yes,” Lew said. “You’ll have to speak to her. But…,”
“What?”
“She must know about the border, mustn’t she? Grant had training from his father.”
There was a thoughtful pause.
“Yes…,” Alec said, finally.
“So, and forgive me if this seems in any way less simple than it seems…we could just tell her the truth.”
That honestly hadn’t occurred to Alec. He stared at Lew.
“The truth?”
“Yes. The truth.” He paused. “Horrific thought that seems?”
There was a relatively long silence.
“Well…,” Alec was just making noises with his mouth whilst his brain processed.
Lew turned his head on the pillow and looked at him enquiringly. “Yes…?”
“The truth? I suppose…,”
“Yes…,” Lew’s tone was one of exquisite patience. Alec realised he was taking the mickey.
“Oh, do be quiet,” Alec conceded. “Fine. We’ll tell her the truth.”
“Will said she was away,” Lew said. “Can you find out when she’s back?”
“I’ll telephone her house,” Alec conceded. “And make some inquiries.”
“Good plan,” Lew said. “Well done for coming up with it!”
Alec punched him in a friendly fashion on his naked shoulder and things quickly deteriorated in to activities that meant words weren’t very necessary.