Ros Clarke's Blog, page 9

Eat: a review

I have been a fan of Nigel Slater’s cookbooks for about 20 years, since I first bought Real Fast Food and Real Fast Puddings. I haven’t kept up with his excursions into food-themed autobiography (Toast, The Kitchen Diaries etc.). But when I saw a copy of his latest book at The Vicar’s Wife‘s vicarage, I decided it was just the thing.

Slater is at his best when combining no more than a handful of ingredients into quick, delicious meals for one or two people. He has a section on sandwiches, which may seem unnecessary, but includes such delights as: Vietnamese prawn baguettes, fishfinger sandwiches, tomato caesar bruschetta, fig and goat’s cheese foccaccia, and Gorgonzola burgers. Recipes are classified according to how they are eaten: in the hand, in a bowl, on a plate, or how they are cooked: on the grill, in a wok, under a crust. There’s also a section of ‘little stews’ for those of us who don’t need casseroles to feed 15 people every night.

Slater is not for everyone. The tagline is ‘over 600 ideas for dinner’ and that’s right. They’re ideas, not detailed recipes with neat lists of ingredients to add to your shopping list, precise quantities, temperatures and measurements. If you like the safety of Delia Smith, you may well find his style frustrating. There are photos of some recipes, but not all and not of method. He assumes you basically know how to cook. He’ll often give you suggestions of possible substitutions, some of which will result in a totally different dish and others which will only make minor alterations to flavour. He’ll encourage you to try it with whatever happens to be in your cupboard, rather than buy new bottles of things specially. It’s not about getting it ‘right’, it’s just about making something lovely to eat.

I’m going to try to cook two or three things inspired by the book most weeks. I’ve got into boring, lazy ruts with cooking lately and I’m hopeful that Eat will jolt me out of them. So for this week, I’m planning: One Pan Sunday Lunch (chicken with bread sauce, which is the best thing ever), Artichokes and Cannellini, and Prawns, Noodles and Spring Carrots. Yum.

Every so often I like to do a post about money. Mostly th...

Every so often I like to do a post about money. Mostly this is because it used to be SO HARD to get any information at all about what authors with different levels of success were making. I think it’s becoming a bit easier to find out, especially for self-publishing. Check out the boards at Absolute Write and KBoards as a starting place. Brenda Hiatt’s Show Me The Money has some figures for romance authors. And if you google, I’m sure you’ll find even more information. But anyway, here’s something about mine.

The UK tax year starts in April, so that’s how my accounts are done. 2013/2014 is, therefore, only a provisional amount. I’ve given the actual amount so far plus my best estimate of what it will be in April. The figures given only include income from writing, not any of my other work. I have not actually been surviving on this income! Dollar approximations in brackets are not exact, since I keep my accounts in sterling.

2011/12: £50.16 ($80)

2012/13: £1776.56 ($2900)

2013/14: £5326.89 (actual); £5900 (estimated total), ($8750 (actual), $9700 (estimated)).

Here’s how that compares to books published:

2011/12: Reckless Runaway, Tycoon’s Convenient Wife, All I Want for Christmas

2012/13: Table for One, The Oil Tycoon

2013/14: Flirting with the Camera, Last Night of the Summer

My biggest seller in 2013/14 by far is The Tycoon’s Convenient Wife. All I Want For Christmas has also contributed a large chunk, mostly because of foreign rights sales.

Total from Entangled books: £2731.11 ($4500)

Total from self-pub books: £3265.71 ($5400)

However, my self-published titles did not really start selling until after the Entangled books came out. I think there is a fair chance that if I had only self-published I’d still be making something more like the 2011/12 figures.

So, that’s where I’m at. It’s all going in the right direction and I’m excited to see what will happen this year.

Four months and eleven days

On May 16th I will be boarding the Queen Mary II for the cruise from New York to Southampton.

CANNOT WAIT.

On board ship there is a pretty strict dress code in the evenings. Three nights will be formal (evening or cocktail dresses) and four will be informal (cocktail dresses). Two nights will be themed balls (themes not yet announced). I do not currently possess suitable wardrobe for this extravaganza. Oddly, my life does not have much call for evening or cocktail dresses. I should change that.

Anyway, I have plans. I have been buying fabric and pinning things to a little private Pinterest board set up for the purpose. Wanna see? Okay, then.

 

I plan to make a cocktail dress similar to this, using this stunning silk devore fabric, underlined in red. The print is huge – the roses are about a foot wide! It will certainly be dramatic.

Second up, this gorgeous skirt and top, which I actually might make into a dress:

I’ve got some beautiful old gold embroidered taffeta which I made into a dress to wear at my brother’s wedding. I can use the skirt of that, shorten it a bit and add a stretch velvet top. Maybe in burgundy. I made a belt for the dress too, which would work well with this look.

And finally for the cocktail dresses, this fabulous fringed number. You can’t see it brilliantly in this photo, but it has a wrap style top and a fringed skirt. I would love to have this dress, but nice fringing is really expensive and I’d need a lot. So, we’ll see.

 

Okay, now for the full-length dresses. I bought a dress in the Monsoon sale last year which has a very peculiar shaped bodice that doesn’t fit or suit me, but the fabric is so stunning, I decided it was worth it. It’s a mid blue with large pansies printed on it. I’ll take the bodice off and make a new one which I think I might add some beading or sequins to. The end result should be something like this:

Then there’s this. I’ve got several metres of a pink/ivory/tan satiny fabric (fabric content unknown) with appliqued bands of lace. I  think it might make a flowy skirt, not very like this. But I want to get some sequinned fabric to make the bodice a bit like this. I am least sure about this dress and it might end up being completely different from the inspiration.

Current shopping list:

3m each of red lining and underlining

1.5m burgundy stretch velvet

Stretch fabric and fringing

Beads/sequins

1m sequinned fabric

Four months and five days? No problem. *eyes up sewing machine nervously*

Four months and five days

On May 9th I will be boarding the Queen Mary II for the cruise from New York to Southampton.

CANNOT WAIT.

On board ship there is a pretty strict dress code in the evenings. Three nights will be formal (evening or cocktail dresses) and four will be informal (cocktail dresses). Two nights will be themed balls (themes not yet announced). I do not currently possess suitable wardrobe for this extravaganza. Oddly, my life does not have much call for evening or cocktail dresses. I should change that.

Anyway, I have plans. I have been buying fabric and pinning things to a little private Pinterest board set up for the purpose. Wanna see? Okay, then.

 

I plan to make a cocktail dress similar to this, using this stunning silk devore fabric, underlined in red. The print is huge – the roses are about a foot wide! It will certainly be dramatic.

Second up, this gorgeous skirt and top, which I actually might make into a dress:

I’ve got some beautiful old gold embroidered taffeta which I made into a dress to wear at my brother’s wedding. I can use the skirt of that, shorten it a bit and add a stretch velvet top. Maybe in burgundy. I made a belt for the dress too, which would work well with this look.

And finally for the cocktail dresses, this fabulous fringed number. You can’t see it brilliantly in this photo, but it has a wrap style top and a fringed skirt. I would love to have this dress, but nice fringing is really expensive and I’d need a lot. So, we’ll see.

 

Okay, now for the full-length dresses. I bought a dress in the Monsoon sale last year which has a very peculiar shaped bodice that doesn’t fit or suit me, but the fabric is so stunning, I decided it was worth it. It’s a mid blue with large pansies printed on it. I’ll take the bodice off and make a new one which I think I might add some beading or sequins to. The end result should be something like this:

Then there’s this. I’ve got several metres of a pink/ivory/tan satiny fabric (fabric content unknown) with appliqued bands of lace. I  think it might make a flowy skirt, not very like this. But I want to get some sequinned fabric to make the bodice a bit like this. I am least sure about this dress and it might end up being completely different from the inspiration.

Current shopping list:

3m each of red lining and underlining

1.5m burgundy stretch velvet

Stretch fabric and fringing

Beads/sequins

1m sequinned fabric

Four months and five days? No problem. *eyes up sewing machine nervously*

Review: The Bridge

I don’t normally post blurbs, but this time I will:

Henry meets Christa on the west tower of the Brooklyn Bridge, just as they’re both about to jump off and kill themselves. Despite his paralyzing depression–and her panic over a second bout of cancer–they can’t go through with their plans knowing that the other is going to die. So they make a pact–they’ll stay alive for 24 hours, and try to convince each other to live.

From the Staten Island Ferry to Chinatown to the Museum of Modern Art–Henry and Christa embark on a New York City odyssey that exposes the darkest moments of their lives. Is it too late for them? Or will love give them the courage to face the terrifying possibility of hope?

I read this because Cecilia Grant picked it as one of her top romances of 2013. I would not normally have picked up a book with this premise but I think I am glad I did. It’s a tough book to read – none of your romantic fluff here – but worth it. These kinds of people don’t often get talked about in romance novels, for obvious reasons, but Maher makes it work.

The Bridge

Author: Rebecca Rogers Maher

Publisher: Promised Land Books

Date: 2013

Cover Art:

It’s a good cover that accurately reflects the tone and content of the story.

Hero: Henry. He is not a hero, but he is the male protagonist of a romance novel and that’s the convention. He’s suffered from depression since his early teens. This is not his first serious suicide attempt. He comes from a wealthy family and his closest relationship was with his nanny. He’s good at his job, he’s good-looking, he’s got everything he could want. He hates life. He hates the world. He hates the depression. The portrayal of Henry’s mental illness absolutely rang true for me. I haven’t ever reached Henry’s suicidal depths, but I have had depression and I recognised some of Henry’s suffering in my own.

Heroine: Christa. I think she is a heroine, actually, as well as by the romance convention. Christa had none of the privileges that Henry grew up with. An addict mother, an absent father, a husband who left her, and now a sister who followed in her mother’s footsteps, Christa is alone in life. Sure, she has friends but she feels she’s used up the support they can offer her the first time she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Right now, she’s got no one.

Other: Not really.

Marriage: Not even close. The ending is about as optimistic as you could realistically imagine given the set up of this book, but it’s clear that this is only the beginning. It’s more about the future being a possibility than about determining what the future will look like.

Enjoyment factor: I was nervous about reading this because of the subject matter and I can’t honestly say that I enjoyed it. But it was compelling and I cared enormously about both Henry and Christa. I wanted them both to find a reason to live and as the book went on I wanted them to see that they could each find that reason in the other. I would certainly recommend this book to others.

Epilogue: No.

The other thing I was thinking about while I read this was a tedious piece of commentary on the romance genre that I read recently which, among other things, was trying to draw comparisons between Ian McEwan’s Atonement and romance novels. The Bridge reminded me of a different McEwan book, Saturday. Both books take place over the course of a life-altering 24 hours. Both have a strong sense of place, being precisely located in large cities. Both discuss issues of coincidence, fate or divine providence. Saturday isn’t a romance novel (by any definition), it’s a much longer book, and it has different goals. The Bridge is a romance novella and as such it works. I was invested in the relationship between Christa and Hugh from the start and was glad to see them come to the resolution they find at the end. But I think it would be possible to read The Bridge as literary fiction too. It’s an exploration of what drives people to end their own lives and what can make it possible to draw back, and on that level, I think it holds up pretty well against the McEwan.

What I’ve been reading

Mrs Wintle’s Wonders (aka Dancing Shoes) by Noel Streatfeild. I don’t think it’s her best book but it has several classic Streatfeild elements and a few good moments. I do like the way that she doesn’t feel obliged to redeem her unpleasant characters or give everyone the happy ending they want.

The Countess Conspiracy by Courtney Milan. I loved this so much. It is a wonderful, wonderful book about characters who I loved and situations that really matter. I think this is a book I would give to non-romance readers to show them that romance is not worthless fluff. This is a book I’ll want to read again and again.

The Chocolate Heart by Laura Florand. Oh, Summer. This book broke my heart. The heroine has the worst parents ever who have left their daughter feeling broken and worthless. Oh, and she doesn’t think she’s allowed to eat desserts. Parents, why do you mess your kids up so badly? Anyway, since this is a Florand chocolate book, the hero is perfectly equipped to put the heroine back together and feed her amazing creations. Very sweetly, she also gets to feed him pasta and steak and real food.

Room at the Inn by Ruthie Knox. I didn’t love this and I’m not quite sure why. The set-up struck me as implausible and the romance didn’t win me over enough to live with that.

Everything You Need To Know by HelenKay Dimon. This was fun. I was a bit nervous about the set-up – heroine runs a website for women to report back on the men they date. But although that is part of the plot, it’s not directly related to the romance. I hadn’t read Dimon before, but I shall look out for her books in the future.



Ripped by Sarah Morgan. I loved this. Short and sweet, it’s a perfect Christmas treat.



Take One Arranged Marriage by Shoma Narayanan. I’m always a sucker for a marriage of convenience story and this, although it is an arranged marriage, fits well within the MOC trope. Both the hero and heroine have their own reasons for the marriage and I thought both were plausible. It’s a sweet story and I’ve now got a couple of Narayanan’s other books on my kindle.

A Date with a Bollywood Star by Rita Lakhani. I forget who was discussing cross-class romances recently, but this is sort-of one and it didn’t work for me. It’s set in the UK, featuring a hero who grew up in working-class Manchester and moved to Pakistan where he became a Bollywood star as a teenager (I wasn’t absolutely convinced by this part of the plot). The heroine is from a middle-class UK Asian family who were upset that she gave up her medical degree to study journalism. I didn’t buy into her total naivete (she’s a journalist!) and nor did I enjoy the manufactured black moment and reversal, wherein the hero lost all his money and then got it back again. I actually thought at first he’d simply pretended to have lost his money to see whether she’d still be willing to marry him (I am not sure she would). But no, and it’s not until he gets the money back that he goes to her and she takes him back.

38 things

Regular readers will remember that when I was 38, I had a list of 38 Things To Do.

Last time I posted, shortly before my 39th birthday, these were the things still undone:

2. Become Dr. Ros

7. Learn to weave properly

10. Learn to make fabulous lingerie

15. Visit 38 new places

20. Do The Artist’s Way

21. Make puff pastry from scratch

22. Start saving for the Best Holiday In The World Ever

30. Get a professional manicure

31. Sign up for an OCA module

I am happy to report that I have since done #2, #20, #22 and #30, leaving:

7. Learn to weave properly

10. Learn to make fabulous lingerie

15. Visit 38 new places

21. Make puff pastry from scratch

31. Sign up for an OCA module

#10 and #21 are just waiting for a quiet day or two to happen soon. I am resigned to the fact that #15 may never happen and have stopped counting. I’m still hopeful of #7 and #31 one day, but they are going to have to wait for a while.

It’s been a fun exercise and I’ve enjoyed the excuse it’s given me to do things I otherwise might have put off for ever.

Writing religion into a romance

First, a lovely surprise – a fascinating comment from Laura Kinsale about her research and thought processes as she wrote Flowers From The Storm:

This was Maddy’s central conflict, trying to distinguish her own self-will, which was obviously to be with the man she loved, from God’s will. Laura V felt he was too satanic for her to love him as a husband, which is exactly what Maddy thought too, so she left him. But when she heard him speak to her, at the end, and thought and listened and wrote another paper, she felt sure it wasn’t only her self-will, but also God’s. I guess if a reader doesn’t accept that as possible, then it won’t ring true. But even though not a religious person myself, I’ve grown up in a Christian tradition, and I’m very sure that it’s taught that Jesus loved sinners more than righteous people. Beyond a romantic connection, or anything about his lifestyle, I think that is the impulse within her, that not only she but he are both sinners, and full of questions about how to live rightly, and that he was her husband and it was wrong to leave him and right to stay with him, however that would play out.

Second, an interview with Noelle Adams about her recent contemporary romance, Married For Christmas, which features a hero who is a pastor. Married For Christmas is a wonderful example of how faith can provide external and internal conflicts, rich characterisation, and a very satisfying romance. I loved it.

Can you tell us a bit about why you chose to write a romance about people whose faith was such an integral part of their lives?

I didn’t start out with the idea to write about people of faith. I was actually brainstorming about realistic scenarios for contemporary marriage of convenience, since it’s my favorite trope but I didn’t want to use a premise I’d already used. That’s how I came up with the pastor hero who needed to marry to be called by a particular church, and the characters’ faith was simply a result of who they were.

In your author’s note you say that Married For Christmas isn’t an inspirational romance. What would you say distinguishes the book from inspirational romances and why did you decide not to go down that route?

As I understand inspirational romance as a genre, they are stories defined by their religious message. That’s not what I wanted to do with Married for Christmas. The story is not about a specific, explicit religious message. It’s about these characters, and these characters happen to be religious. That distinction is important to me, and I think it makes for very different sorts of books. I also didn’t want to be limited by the tight boundaries around content that inspirational romances seem to require. Since regular of readers of inspirational romance expect those boundaries, I thought it was very important to distinguish Married for Christmas from the genre. The story also doesn’t try to proselytize and doesn’t limit the Christian experience to conversion and morality. I don’t want to make broad generalizations about a genre I haven’t read widely in, but all of the inspirational romances I’ve read have done those things—which is one of the reasons I don’t read them anymore.

You do a great job in the book at showing both the interior life of faith and the external life of the church. How did you balance the development of those aspects of the plot with the romance?

This is a great question, but I don’t have a great answer. I just wrote what felt right for the characters. Since Daniel is a pastor and that’s an unusual job for a contemporary romance hero, I thought readers would want to see some of what the life of a pastor might look like. The central conflict turned around internal spirituality, however, so that had to take up a substantive part of the plot and was really the most exciting part of the story for me.

One of the things I loved about the book was the way in which you showed Daniel and Jessica’s flaws. I particularly loved the scene where she uses decidedly unChristian language! Did you ever feel that you “ought” to write Christians speaking or behaving in certain ways?

I didn’t really feel like I ought to portray them in any certain way—except what is genuinely human, which is always my guide for characterization. I did think readers might expect a different sort of portrait of Christian characters. I dealt with possible expectations by making the language at issue in the story itself. Since Jessica felt guilty about it, the topic itself could be addressed in a somewhat natural way—which I thought might help with any surprise from

readers.

I know that you’ve self-published several books as well as being published through Entangled (me too!). What made you choose to self-publish this one? Have you ever had any discussions with publishers about whether they’d be interested in books featuring characters of faith?

I’m pretty sure no publisher would have touched Married with Christmas, but I didn’t actually shop it around. It’s out of the box in so many ways it would have been a hard sell even without the pastor hero. It’s category length, but not high drama, and it’s third person limited with no hero point-of-view, and it’s religiously-oriented but has graphic sex scenes. Add this to the pastor hero, when romance readers aren’t interested in pastor heroes in anything but inspirational romances (or so I’ve been told), and you have an impossible story to sell to a publisher. Maybe I could have found one publisher who would have taken a chance on it, but I didn’t want to even try, because I didn’t want to risk the book being edited to fit a certain publishing niche. I love self-publishing, since it frees me up to take any sort of risk I want to take without trying to force myself to fit into niches that just aren’t right for my stories. I was mostly convinced this book would be a complete flop, but that was a risk I was willing to take because I wanted so much to tell this story.

I notice this is the first in a new series of books you’re writing. Will the others also feature Christian characters and can you tell us about them?

Yes, the other books in the series will be set in Willow Park and will revolve around the same church. The next one is an Easter book and will feature Daniel’s brother, Micah, who was a player before he came back to the church. I’m really excited about it!

I’m always looking for recommendations! Have you read any other romances featuring characters of faith that you can share?

Not really, unfortunately. I don’t read inspirational romance, and the contemporary Christian fiction I’ve read hasn’t really impressed me. I will say I haven’t read widely so there may be great stuff out there I’m not familiar with. It really seems like religion is a topic that isn’t deal with in non-inspirational contemporary romance—except in rather superficial ways. I don’t know why, unless writers are going with the “polite” conversation rule and avoiding controversial topics like politics and religion in their stories. I’d love to see more of it or hear recommendations if there’s more out there that I’m not aware of.



I’ve been in theological colleges and seminaries for the past 11 years. Why haven’t I met a sexy pastor like Daniel yet?

LOL. I guess they’re all already in marriages-of-convenience. I often wonder where all these young, sexy CEO’s are from romances too. Evidently, there’s one around every corner, but I never seem to run into them!

Thanks so much for taking the time to do this interview, Noelle. I’ll definitely be looking out for Micah’s book next year.

What’s on my kindle for Christmas

I have been hoarding up books by some of my favourite authors for a special Christmas reading binge next week. Here’s some of what I’m looking forward to:

Courtney Milan’s The Countess Conspiracy

Sarah Morgan’s Ripped

Laura Florand’s The Chocolate Heart

HelenKay Dimon’s Everything You Need To Know

Rebecca Rogers Maher’s The Bridge

Shoma Narayanan’s Monsoon Wedding Fever

Nina Rowan’s A Study in Seduction (I have been waiting for this to be available in ebook in the UK forever.

What’s on your TBR pile for the Christmas break? Which books are you hoping to get in your stocking? Is there anything else I need to add to my list?!

Other people are talking about romance and religion too!

Ruthie Knox read and recommended Noelle Adams’s Married for Christmas earlier this week and the comments have some great discussion about religion in non-inspirational romance novels.

One of the links mentioned in the comments is this list of vicars as romance novel heroes from Heroes and Heartbreakers.

Amber Belldene who is a romance author and a minister also mentioned that she is involved in a panel at next year’s RT convention discussing spirituality and sexuality.

Laura Vivanco draws some parallels between religion and romance in a blog post from a while ago.

Have you seen any other discussions of religion in relation to romance novels? Or have any other recommendations of books to read?