Round Robin – February

This month the topic comes in two questions:

How can contemporary Fiction keep up with our swiftly changing world, politically, socially or technically? Or how do you keep your stories located in time?

So – two bites of the cherry or an answer that wraps up both ways of looking at the issue.

I regard myself as a mainly historical writer and with that in mind need to remember which words can be used and which words have taken on such universal loathing that no writer would do so. The assertion that ‘Well that’s what the character would have said.’ doesn’t get you off the hook. Perversely, it’s also the case that readers think some words are too modern whereas they’ve possibly been around for centuries. I don’t want to pull my reader out of the story, so I tend to avoid them.

I tend also to pay a lot of attention to the advice of the late Hilary Mantel. Don’t think the unthinkable. So I do not have my female characters spending all their page-time kicking over the traces. They may be moving things along, but it’ll be in a believable way. Mariah Fox, for example, teaches and that is an acceptable pursuit for the daughter of an academic man. However, she knows when Tobias outwits her, that she will have to give way and marry him.

Anne by Marte Lundby Rekaa

Sophia Jex-Blake, an Edinburgh doctor, did huge amounts for the advancement of women in university education. She comes later in the nineteenth century when that was a political and social issue of huge import. There was even a riot.

Gerard Fay

In addition to reading up about what was contemporary when, I have a huge collection of books detailing things like costume and manners. Who doesn’t love ‘dressing the set’? Does a crowd of men in boilersuits and flat caps conjure up a different era to a crowd of men in linen smocks with gaiters tied around their calves?

Transport, getting technical, and communication are huge areas. My characters have to walk, ride a horse or sail. Today people, including women, drive their own cars, fly their own planes and hug a mobile phone on which their existence depends. Crime writers, I think, must often wish the mobile to perdition.

My characters bow and curtsey. Usually as deference to rank or age, but sometimes due to good manners. I am old enough to remember practising my curtsey before important visitors came to the school. How different is our contemporary wish to take a selfie with anyone from the Regency era when one could not even address a person before an introduction in the proper form. Possibly some hard pressed contemporary ‘celebs’ might see the value in that!

It’s both romance month and library month here in the UK. Mariah’s Marriage, Daisy’s Dilemma, Courting the Countess and A debt for Rosalie are all available from the library. Courting the Countess is also available for your kindle. City of Discoveries is available online to read in 50 parts in the People’s Friend archive.

Other Robins are listed below and I’m looking forward to their take on our topic.

Anne

Victoria Chatham http://www.victoriachatham.com

Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/

Dr. Bob Rich  https://wp.me/p3Xihq-2QS

Anne Stenhouse http://wp.me/31Isq

Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com/blog

Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea

Diary of a Writer – February Prompt

I know I’ve used this photograph of domestic letter-boxes as a prompt before, but I make no apologies.

February is the month of the Valentine and how many romantically inclined readers have not spent an agonising wait for that tell-tale plop as an envelope falls through their own domestic letter-box?

As the years pass, perhaps, greater value may be attached to the everyday and ongoing attentions and manifestations of love than to the ephemeral grand gesture that is a bunch of hugely expensive red roses. (Does anyone ever receive any violets blue?) However, the romantic novel is concerned with the winning of the right to bestow that ongoing, maturing, constant love.

Setbacks are required and what would parallel the placing of your crafted Valentine with its words of love and a secret rendezvous into the wrong post-box?

I can’t think.(Ed)

What would stymie your overtures more than a strict and horrified Papa finding the Valentine first?

Double can’t think. (Ed)

And if you’re the lady sending a Valentine, equal care is needed as not all mamas and papas would appreciate every image chosen.

I probably won’t be sending any Valentines, but having attended both a Haiku workshop and a poetry workshop courtesy of Edinburgh Writers’ Club in recent weeks, I’m tempted.

Actually, I’m at work on a new serial for the People’s Friend and in between instalments on a new Pocket Novel.

The lovely folk at Ulverscroft recently accepted my contemporary novel, Christmas at Maldington, for their catalogue and it will be going into libraries later in the year. Look out for it. May I just say thank you to all the discerning readers who borrowed my books from libraries and enabled an exciting payments’ notice from the PLR. I do appreciate it.

All good wishes for your own writing, and reading, Courting the Countess has been attracting ratings over on Amazon and is available at a modest price for your kindle.

Anne