sylvia marks – Page 2

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.

Killing your pretties

crop unrecognizable person with bright eye and rare eyelashes — Photo by lilartsy on Pexels.com

Content warning for this whole post: I’m talking about writing about death, bodies and the dead. There are no photos here, but there are disturbing photos in some of the articles I link to at the bottom of the post. I detail this after each link so you can exercise your own judgement.

The Fog of War by A. L. Lester, First in the Bradfield Trilogy, part of the Border Magic Universe

I’ve sent the manuscript of the sequel to The Fog of War this week…The Quid Pro Quo will be out on the 20th of November. So now it’s time to blog about all those interesting things I found out whilst I was writing it. And I’m starting with rigor mortis. Yay!

The book begins with the discovery of a body in the village duckpond and the characters need the time of death in order to work out people’s alibis. I’ve never written a body for which I’ve needed time of death before, so I went googling. The number of writers who do this must be extraordinary–presumably we’re all on some sort of watch-list somewhere.

When it came down to it, there’s only a page or two at most about it in the actual book, but I felt that I needed to know a lot more about the subject before I could move on with the story. This is standard for me. One of the things I find most frustrating about my own creative process is that I need to find out a lot more about subjects like this than I put in the book. To illustrate how easily I over-research, I always use the example from The Flowers of Time where I made my own butter, then clarified it to make a butter-lamp as a light source.

I didn’t go that far this time. I’m not so dedicated to my art that I’m prepared to create a corpse and observe the stages of decomposition in order to write about it properly. For both moral, practical and legal reasons. I did do a lot more reading that I probably needed to though, and squicked myself out thoroughly in the process.

Up until that point, my body, Charlotte Fortescue, had been a narrative tool–she gets offed very early in the book and she wasn’t a terribly nice person. We’re not really supposed to spend much time feeling sorry for her, she’s just the doorway for us to get into the actual plot. However, after I read all these truly gruesome accounts of what happens to a body after death, I began to feel very sorry for her indeed.

It was most uncomfortable. I didn’t want to feel pity for her…and I didn’t want reader not to feel for her, exactly, but I didn’t want people to feel they had to waste their emotions on her when she’s effectively a means to an end. I’m now stressing slightly whether I’ve struck the right balance, but it’s too late now, it’s gone off for edits and that’s that.

Here are the resources I found most helpful, whether you’re a writer looking for information, or just an interested bystander. I’ve given additional info about how distressing they are, so please do take heed. I felt wonky for a few days after reading the final one.

For an overall summary, I recommend the lovely Ofelia Grand’s blogpost, For when the poor sod needs to die. No gruesome pictures, respectful approach with a light touch, very helpful.
I then moved on to the Wiki article about rigor mortis (which has one photo of bodies in rigor, exercise care) and has a broad overview of technical stuff–also links to articles to all the other stages a body goes through after death. It’s very well-referenced.
For the forensics part of the story, I read Methods of estimation of time since death (no pictures) from this very in depth NCBI* article. Interesting, mentions maggots, don’t read at lunchtime.
However, I needed to know about bodies found in water. So I ended up at Decomposition changes in bodies recovered from water also at NCBI*. This comes with a very serious content warning, I’m not kidding people. There are photos of people who died in very unpleasant circumstances and I found it very upsetting.

*National Center for Biotechnology Information

Next time I plot something out like this I’m going to try and avoid needing forensics as a time of death because I really don’t want to have to read all these again!

Women doctors in the late nineteenth century

A bit about... Women Doctors in the Late 19th Century

Sylvia Marks qualified as a doctor in 1910, which makes her a) a bit of a prodigy because I messed up my timeline and b) someone who really knew what she wanted and went for it against all sorts of prejudice.

I’ve put a shed-load of wiki links in this, because a blog post is stonkingly inadequate to cover it all; this is a very brief summary of the actions of a load of very able, determined and amazing people. For actual proper references see at the bottom of the wiki pages, they’re pretty well annotated.

Sylvia Marks’ character was originally based on stories my grandmother used to tell about a local doctor-friend of her mother’s, who’d come and visit and sit on the kitchen table with her skirts hitched up and smoke whilst they chatted. However, once I decided she needed her own book, I needed more than just that to base her on–so I went reading.

The first woman doctor in England was Elizabeth Garrett-Anderson, who along with Sophia Jex-Blake, the first women doctor in Scotland, fought long and hard for the privilege. Garrett-Anderson exploited loopholes in the articles of the Society of Apothecaries and the British Medical Association that were immediately sewn up for a couple of decades once she’d passed through and were therefore closed to Jex-Blake.

Initially getting the education was difficult and the women paid for private tuition and had to wheedle their way into practical and observation sessions with various levels of success. There was a lot of resistance–all the usual stupid stuff about women’s poor little brains overheating with facts, being sensitive creatures who should be protected from icky medical nastiness and the like. As time went on, however, the tide gradually began to turn.

Across the UK there was a growing pressure for women to be able to formally access university education. Jex-Blake eventually became one of the Edinburgh Seven, the first women to ever be admitted to university courses in the United Kingdom in 1869. However, although the Edinburgh Seven joined the university as undergraduates they were not allowed to qualify as doctors. They scattered across Europe and most qualified in either Paris and Berne to get their M. Ds..

Finally, in 1876 new legislation meant that examining bodies were able (but not forced) to consider women medical candidates and eventually, in 1877, legislation was finally passed to enable women across the UK to be awarded degrees.

After qualifying through her loop-hole, Garrett-Anderson founded The London School of Medicine for Women (1874), along with Jex-Blake and Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman in the USA to qualify as a doctor. Jex-Blake also set up The Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women (1886). It sounds as if she wasn’t a people-person–she fell out with some of her students and one of them, Elsie Inglis, left her school and founded the Edinburgh College of Medicine for Women (1889).

These handful of women who pushed and pushed through the patriarchal mid-nineteenth century education structures forced a path for other women to follow. They were proactive in lifting up their peers and those that came behind them. However, despite all this, women doctors were pretty much confined to treating women and children and not accepted in general hospital practice. Many of them were active women’s suffragists and when war broke out in Europe in 1914 they saw it as an opportunity to show that women could serve and be useful alongside men.

Inglis, who sounds like a truly amazing person, founded the Scottish Womens Hospitals for Foreign Service in 1914, where I made Sylvia do her war-work. Louisa Garrett-Anderson initially went to Europe to set up a hospital in Paris, which impressed the military authorities so much she was invited to come back to London and set up the Endell Street Military Hospital along with her partner Flora Murray. Sylvia is a sort of composite of these amazing people–not forgetting Dr Frances Ivens, who commanded the hospital at Royaumont.

The tenacity, the dedication to both professional and personal development and the willingness to engage in public life to lift other women up is very evident when you read about all these people. It must have been a truly exhausting struggle for them. I am really pleased to be able to bring them to people’s notice again a century and more later, even in a terribly fictionalised way.

The Fog of War, out today!

And…we’re off! The Fog of War is live today! I am so grateful to everyone who has reviewed and let me drop in to their blogs with posts and such-like. It’s a sapphic, historical, paranormal, romantic mystery set in rural England in 1920.

To celebrate today, I’m hosting a party at the Lester Towers facebook group with lots of friends dropping in to say hi and offer giveaways.

I’ve also got a Rafflecopter draw running from the 13th-17th of August with a chance to win a $10 Amazon gift-card if you fancy throwing your hat into the ring.

Finally, I’m doing a bit of a blog-tour talking about the characters, settings and the history behind it and you’ll be able to find the other posts listed on my website as they come out this week. I’ve already visited Anne Barwell’s blog to talk about the village of Bradfield, Elizabeth Noble’s blog to talk about where I’d go if I could time travel and The Sapphic Bookclub to talk about the women-led hospitals in WW1.

The Fog of War

Publisher: JMS Books LLC
Editor: Lourenza Adlem
Release date: 14 Aug 2014
Word Count: 50,000 words
Genre: Sapphic, found-family, historical, paranormal romantic mystery set in 1920s England.
Content Warning: Mention of domestic violence.

The quiet village of Bradfield should offer Dr Sylvia Marks the refuge she seeks when she returns home from her time in a field hospital in France in 1918. However, she is still haunted by the disappearance of her ambulance-driver lover two years previously ,and settling down as a village doctor is more difficult than she realised it would be after the excitement of front-line medicine. Then curious events at a local farm, mysterious lights and a hallucinating patient’s strange illness make her revisit her assessment of Anna’s death on the battlefield.

Lucille Hall-Bridges is at a loose end now her nursing work is finished. She felt useful as a nurse and now she really doesn’t know what to do with her life. She hopes going to stay with her friend Sylvia for a while will help her find a way forward. And if that involves staying at Bradfield with Sylvia…then that’s fine with her.

Will the arrival of Lucy at Bradfield be the catalyst that allows both women to lay their wartime stresses to rest? Can Sylvia move on from her love affair with Anna and find happiness with Lucy, or is she still too entwined in the unresolved endings of the past?

The first in the Bradfield trilogy, set in the Border Magic universe.

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Excerpt

It was a beautiful late August day when Sylvia motored down to Taunton to collect Lucy from the railway station. The sun shone through the trees as she followed the lane down the hill from the village and the sky above was a beautiful summer blue. She had left the all-weather hood of the Austin down and wore a scarf and gloves against the wind, topping her trouser outfit off with her new hat, which she pinned firmly to the neat coil of her long hair.

Walter had watched her fussing with her appearance in the hall mirror, stuffing his pipe. “Are you sweet on her?” he asked, somewhat acerbically.

“It’ll be cold with the hood down,” she said, crushingly.

“Yes, yes, so it will be.” He turned his attention back to his tobacco, face straight. “Be careful on the bends.”

“I will,” she said. “She’s a beast to drive, smooth on the straights and handles well on the corners, but I’ve no desire to end up in the ditch.”

The Fog of War. Historical, paranormal, 1920s England

She’d bought the big Austin coupe late last winter when she’d got fed up riding her motorcycle out to some of the more remote houses she was called to in the dreadful weather. It was huge, far bigger than she needed really, although the back seat was useful to transport a patient if she had to. She still preferred her ‘cycle, but it wasn’t exactly suitable as a doctor’s vehicle. Not very staid at all. The Austin wasn’t very staid either, in that it was huge and expensive; but one of the benefits of a private income was that she could afford it; and so why not be comfortable?

She pondered all this and more on the drive down to Taunton, mind floating along with no real purpose. She loved to drive and for some reason it calmed her thoughts and allowed them to drift.

It would be lovely to see Lucy again. As Walt had said, she was a sweet little thing. Although Sylvia didn’t want to revisit the grim minutiae of some of the worst times at Royaumont, it would be lovely to reminisce about some of their happier moments of camaraderie. It had been four years of extreme stress and grim terror lightened with moments of laughter and fun. Working with a team of competent women all pulling together for one purpose had been extraordinary. She’d never experienced anything like it before and she doubted she would again. She was delighted some of the staff had set up a regular newsletter so they could all stay connected.

And so what if Lucy was sweet on her. Sylvia wasn’t interested in that kind of complication anymore. She didn’t want to cause gossip in the village for a start…although she supposed people wouldn’t make any assumptions about two women living together these days after so many men hadn’t come home from France. But anyway, even if it wouldn’t cause gossip, she didn’t think about Lucy like that. And she doubted Lucy thought about Sylvia like that, despite Walter’s teasing. He was stirring the pot a little to see what bubbled up, that was all.

Those musings took her to the station.

The train was on time and was just pulling in as she got out of the car. She walked out onto the platform as the smoke was clearing and through the clouds, she made out Lucy.

She was beside the guard’s van, directing the guard and porters to what seemed like an unnecessarily large pile of luggage. Despite the clement August weather, she was wearing an extremely smart velvet coat with a fur collar over a beautiful travelling suit that hung to mid calf, topped with an extraordinary confection of a hat.

She looked competent and sophisticated and exceptionally beautiful. Not at all the slightly scapegrace young person of 1916 who had persuaded the hospital powers-that-be she was a suitable candidate for France, although she’d been only twenty-one and inexperienced as a nurse.

Well. Gosh.

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Why ‘The Fog of War’?

As I may have mentioned, just in passing, The Fog of War is out tomorrow. One or two people have pointed out that it’s a slightly peculiar title juxtaposed with the 1920s art-deco cover and what the heck is going on?

The Fog of War. Historical, paranormal, 1920s Englandl

I have a confession, then.

Mr AL named it.

I mean, of course I thought it was a good title and went with it, he didn’t elbow me out of the way to fill in the PUT TITLE HERE bit on the submission form or anything. But he came up with it. He did the same for a couple of my other stories, too–he seems to have a bit of a gift for it. He doesn’t read my books or beta for me or anything, we write in very different genres. But he does listen patiently as I whine about plot-holes and helps me tighten up my blurbs. I do the same for him and it works quite well, I think.

When he came up with it, just throwing potential titles out at me at lightening speed, it immediately struck home.

It’s an evocative phrase first used exactly in the 1890s, although fog, twilight, moonlight and similar concepts had been used earlier in the century by a chap called Carl Von Clausewitz. It describes the confusion of battle, how uncertainty about capability and action on the battlefield are a hindrance or can be used to ones advantage.

It immediately resonated for me because Sylvia and Lucy and their friends are drifting round trying to work out what happened to Anna without having enough information to understand the bigger picture. In retrospect I think it probably clashes terribly with the cartoon cover; but I love the title and I love the artwork, so here we are!

Remember tomorrow there’s a release-party in my facebook group to celebrate the book going live. Lots of author friends are popping in the say hi and both they and I have giveaways and games galore. Do pop in and join in! I also have a Rafflecopter draw going to win a $10 Amazon gift card that you can join today.