Ros Clarke's Blog, page 25

Liveblog: chapter five

To recap what happened yesterday: a whole lot of crazy stuff which makes less sense the more you think about it.

Valessa does some thinking. What she thinks is that there is a drug in the milk which makes her stupid. What I think is she doesn’t need drugs for that. When she wakes up she remembers that she knows the vicar who married them. Too stupid to have remembered it in time to be any use.

Anyway, she has her £200 and lots of new clothes. So that’s all right. Unfortunately the £200 is a cheque so when she leaves she has to explain to her maid why she can’t give her a tip. She does this in one sentence with no less than seven ellipses. I expect the maid had lost the will to live before Valessa finished. Oddly, Cartland’s ellipses only have two dots, not three.

There is a tedious description of the Marquis’s Phaeton which, unbeknownst to Valessa, he had designed himself. The luggage goes under the groom’s seat and there is room for his valet. Fascinating. Once they are in the phaeton, they have this exchange:

“Would it .. be possible for you …?”

“Be silent! I have no wish to speak to you until we reach London!”

As you see, he has even less patience with her ellipses than I do. Instead of chatting, he calculates that if George IV could drive to Brighton in 5 1/2 house, and Ridgeley Towers is 80 miles from London, they should arrive before he has strangled his wife. He’s also worried that ‘In the Drawing-Rooms and Boudoirs of his friends, the Clubs of St James’s and of course in Buckingham Palace the King and Queen would not be amused.’ Hmm.

Meanwhile Valessa is deciding that she’ll go home and use her £200 to redecorate her bedroom and sitting room. She hopes that the Marquis will give her a small allowance if he doesn’t want her to starve. I’d say her chances on that are low to non-existent. She thinks about getting a job but decides she’s too young. All she can do is ask for her dead mother to help, though it is unclear what sort of help she expects. They continue on their journey, stopping for meals four times, each individually described even though nothing of note happens at them. Eventually Valessa falls asleep for which we are all profoundly grateful.

When she wakes up, she is on a boat. It takes her two pages to work this out. Maybe she’s had more of that stupid-making drug.There’s a bathroom next to her cabin, which leads to some pointless reminiscing about washing under the pump at home. She has breakfast in bed wearing a blue stole trimmed with maribou feathers. For three days she stays in her cabin, not seeing the Marquis and being reminded of sitting on a swing when she was a little girl.

Eventually she decides to get up and face the Ogre.

Win, win, win!

There is an unlikely star of my latest book: the humble dugong. If you’re not sure what a dugong is, let Mr Weebl explain:

I didn’t know anything about dugongs before I started writing the book, but I am now very fond of their strange, gentle ugliness. They eat seagrass and are therefore also known as sea-cows. They live in the seas around Australia, in the Persian Gulf and various other warm coastal waters. It’s a mammal, not a fish.

I am giving away a copy of this beautiful print featuring a dugong:

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To enter, all you have to do is leave a comment telling me your favourite ugly animal. Giveaway open internationally. One entry per person. Entries close at midnight (BST) on Monday 27th August.

Happy hour!

Happy hour! For the next hour ONLY,  Reckless Runaway at the Racecourse is FREE at Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...

Caption that cover art: contemporary romance crazy

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I am almost too scared to ask, but here goes. Titles, captions, blurbs for the book that would have this cover. Which I am NOT writing.

Big Bonanza Bank Holiday Bash Day 3

Coming up today:

Caption that cover art: contemporary romance crazy

Another non-cover for captions, titles and blurbs.

Watch out for another happy hour when I will be giving away books for FREE.

The last three chapters of the liveblog will be going up later today. Catch up with yesterday’s chapters here.

And there will be another giveaway, to win this beautiful print:

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Entries are still open for the giveaway of The Oil Tycoon and her Sexy Sheikh, with bonus Reckless Runaway at the Racecourse and The Tycoon’s Convenient Wife.

Liveblog: chapter four

We are nearly halfway through. I will say this for Barbara Cartland’s books: they are short.

The day of the Steeple-Chase has arrived. This is where Lady Barton’s horses are racing against the Marquis’s horses and Valessa is wildly excited, though it is not at all clear why.

“There were men in pink coats collecting their hats and gloves from the footmen, seven of them wore peacock blue, which she discovered had been provided by Sarah for her own team.”

Who is wearing peacock blue? Is peacock blue a shade of pink? Does Sarah have a team of footmen? So many questions, so little interest.

The Marquis is riding an obstreporous stallion. Just by looking at him, Valessa knows he is as good as a god from another Planet. Or the Man in the Moon. Excuse me while I throw up. Guess who wins the race? Go on, you’ll never get it. The Marquis! Lady Barton is disappointed but she is already planning her revenge, so that’s okay. In the afternoon they do showjumping but Valessa is sent to bed so she can’t watch it.

When she comes down for dinner she gets to meet the Marquis for the first time. Exactly halfway through the book. She’d never get away with that these days. She mostly speaks in ellipses and he replies in exclamation marks. The words are irrelevant. After dinner, Valessa is taken upstairs and dressed in a wedding dress. She’s going to be taken to the chapel and married to a man in a wheelchair and dark glasses. Then everyone will guess which man she’s married.

Um. What?

It’s a charade. Ri-ight.

Valessa thinks it’s ‘an original idea’. Well, she’s right about that.

Afterwards, there’s going to be a ‘special surprise’ for Valessa. If you have a bad feeling about that, you’re right.

So they go through the ceremony. Valessa thinks that the Marquis’s distinctive voice will be a clue for everyone. Oddly, she doesn’t think that him saying his name will be any sort of clue at all. Valessa has a panicked moment halfway through when she realises she shouldn’t be making a mockery of a Sacrament of the Church. Marriage is not a sacrament in the CofE, but I agree, she shouldn’t be doing this.

They take her and the Marquis off to a private chamber and everyone has a glass of wine. Valessa’s is drugged. When she wakes up, she’s in bed. With the Marquis! And everyone else watching!

But wait, there’s more!

The marriage service was genuine and the vicar was a real vicar. Someone got a special licence. Sarah has got her revenge. If the Marquis thinks she wasn’t good enough to be his wife, she’s given him a wife who was starving and in rags.

Gosh. I wonder how that’s going to turn out.

Liveblog: chapter three

Are we all sitting comfortably? I would think that from now on, this book is best tackled with a large drink. Or a lighted match. Still, we’ll press on.

Blah, blah, blah, Lady Barton proposes to the Marquis and he says no, as we’ve already been informed, with exactly the ridiculous words and exclamation marks she told us. This is the most convoluted way of telling a story. Cartland would have done well to start at the beginning and keep going to the end. We’re also informed that people with new money should stay where they belong, which seems to be mostly Liverpool.

The Marquis returns from the hunting (which is where Lady Barton fell off her horse) to Ridgeley Towers where everyone hates him without him knowing it. Meanwhile, Valessa is asleep upstairs with £200 and a glass of milk. A maid comes to help her dress and put on make up. Valessa knows that Ladies of London (which is presumably a very discreet brothel frequented only by Gentlemen) use cosmetics. Tonight she’s supposed to enjoy herself (seems unlikely) and tomorrow she’ll be part of a charade.

At dinner she has to talk to some uninteresting man about horses. Then she sees the Marquis, who apparently looks as though he should have been a king. His name is Stafford. I’d forgotten that. Valessa calls him the Man in the Moon because she is that sort of woman. I bet she sleeps with teddy bears and likes Hello Kitty.

Everybody goes to bed early and alone. That was unexpected.

Happy Hour!

For one hour only, The Tycoon’s Convenient Wife is free on Smashwords here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view... Tell all your friends!

Liveblog: chapter 2

One of the Gentlemen notices that Valessa is hungry. She can’t imagine how ‘unless he was clairvoyant or else particularly observant.’ Huh? I’ve never known a clairvoyant offering to tell clients whether or not they are hungry. Anyway, he gives her a sandwich and some brandy. Then he persuades her to go with him to Ridgeley Towers where she is going to be entertainment for the guests. This is not going to end well. Still, she’s going to get £200 out of it which will save her from having to drown herself. I guess that’s good for her. Not us, though. We’re going to have to keep reading.

On the way to Ridgeley Towers, Lady Barton explains that she is holding a special party for the Marquis of Wyndonbury. I assume this is the same person referred to elsewhere as the Marquis of Wyndonberry and the Marquess of Wyndonberry, though who knows? Lady Barton doesn’t tell Valessa that her father was called Fred Wicket and that he ‘realised the only way he could be accepted socially was to beat the sportsmen at their own game.’ Presumably that game was cricket.

Fred Wicket’s father was ‘an unimportant Solicitor, who had provided him with a good education. He had won a Scholarship to University and gained a Degree with an iron determination that he would become a millionaire. He fought his way into the Shipping Industry.’ You know, Barbara Cartland would have been right at home on the internet, with that attitude to capitalisation. Anyway, Fred Wicket’s daughter married a man who ‘concentrated fanatically on making himself an Emperor of Finance and a King of Sport at the same time.’ Unfortunately, he contracted a wasting disease and died. Well, unfortunately for him. It was very fortunate for Lady Barton.

Lady Barton sneaks into the Marquis of Windowbox’s bed and thus becomes his mistress. The next step is the house party, wholly geared to getting a proposal of marriage out of him.

So, you may have noticed that basically nothing happens in this chapter except backstory. This is just one reason why the book is so difficult to read. Cartland jumps from past to present all over the place. It makes my head hurt. I think that by the end of this chapter the refusal of marriage which was mentioned in the first chapter hasn’t actually happened yet, but I wouldn’t swear to it.

Liveblog: chapter one

Okay, before we get to chapter one, there is a synopsis of the plot. Literally, the whole crazy plot. I can only assume that this is intended for readers who can’t bear to get through Cartland’s prose. Which is fair enough. Although even this summary is written in Cartland’s inimitable style with a new paragraph for each sentence. We are also warned that this is her 412th book. No wonder she’s run out of good ideas.

There is also a tedious author’s note about the history of steeplechasing with a lot of incorrect capitalisation.

Right, then. Deep breath. Chapter One. 1836.

Oh, dear lord, this never gets better. Our heroine, Valessa (which is not a real name in 1836 or at any other time), opens proceedings by saying, ‘It is a nice day for dying.’ She has a sudden impulse to stay alive because she had breakfast, but thinks better of it. I wish I could say that she got on with the dying, but no.

So, Valessa has been living on her own, gradually selling everything in her house or bartering it for food. Now she’s run out, she can’t think of anything to do but die. Yes, she is that pathetic. It had obviously never occurred to her to work, for instance. Valessa, we’re told, had posh parents but her father was cut off from his family without a penny. She had an idyllic childhood travelling the world until her mother died and her father spent all the money gambling. And then he, most inconsiderately, died, leaving nothing but a pile of debts and a useless daughter who can only… speak… in… ellipses.

Lots of inappropriately-capitalised people come to collect on their debts. Valessa thinks that if only she could get to London, she’d be fine. Then she decides she’s too scared. This is because some men once looked at her in what she thought was a frightening manner. But then, as she points out to herself, ‘Her hair had in the past always seemed to shimmer as if the sunshine was in it,’ but now it’s long and limp and dull. So who knows what will happen?!

Anyway, she puts on her warm coat, which she thinks will help her drown more quickly. She’s on her way to drown herself when someone knocks at the door spoiling everything. Someone turns out to be three Gentlemen carrying a woman who has fallen off a horse.

The woman is the enormously rich Lady Barton from Ridgeley Towers (wonder if that’s where Andrew Ridgeley came from before his Wham! days). She’s supposed to be very attractive, as the Grocer’s son says of her suitors: “Loik flies roun’ a ‘oneypot they be.” So that tells you everything you need to know about Barbara Cartland’s views of ordinary people. Lady Barton is a rich young widow whose money derives from the slave trade. Valessa is shocked! Shocked, I tell you.

While Valessa binds up Lady Barton’s arm, the woman tells her Gentleman friends that her current lover has declined to marry her. Apparently she thought her horses would make up for her vulgarity, but he was not convinced. She claims he said, “My dear Sarah, you are very attractive and very exciting! At the same time, when I marry it has to be to somebody whom my family will consider my equal!” Sorry, I should have warned you about the exclamation marks.

Now, to be fair, one of Lady Barton’s friends does respond by saying, “I do not believe it! No man could talk like that!” Sadly, the rest of the book proves that Cartland disagrees.

Two more important facts come out: one of the friends does a good impression of Lady Barton’s lover, and Lady Barton has An Idea.