Elizabeth Ellen Carter's Blog, page 28

Catching My Breath

Wow – what a huge few weeks it’s been for me.

In addition to going through edits for Warrior’s Surrender (and I’ll share some big news in a bit, so be patient…) and revisions for Moonstone Conspiracy, my real life working world had me holding the fort while my marketing assistant went on holiday (and got engaged – congratulations Sarah!), helping to run a conference for the company directors and 20 guests who stayed at Uluru.

Then my husband and I had a wonderful time over the weekend playing host to three of the guests from the US who decided to pay us a visit here on the Gold Coast (you know, they were in the area, so they’d drop in ).

That means three days away from the computer which means I’m a little bit late bringing you this news”

Warrior’s Surrender has a new release date:

Warrior’s Surrender will be released on October 17

I’m very excited by this, because that turns out to be the day before my debut historical romance, Moonstone Obsession, has it’s book birthday!

On this blog, October will be dedicated to a good old fashioned Medieval Faire with games and prizes and interesting tidbits of medieval life and culture – including weekly recipes!

October will also be dedicated to showcasing A Season To Remember, the short story anthology that I have been privileged to be a part of you can catch up with our characters in a one-on-one interview on Eva Scott’s blog, and then hop over to Noelle Clark’s blog where she has released the first of four ‘micro-stories’ in which characters from each of the four very different stories meet one another.

It’s great fun!

Well the next step is waiting for the cover for Warrior’s Surrender. I can’t wait to see it and I can’t wait to show it to you!

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Cover Reveal Day – A Season To Remember

As many of you know, I’ve been working on a wonderful project with three amazing authors – Susanne Bellamy, Eva Scott and Noelle Clark.

My contribution is Three Ships, a sweet little short story set in the early 1800s on the Devon Coast.

The Season To Remember short story anthology will be released late in November – and it will be FREE to download!

To give you a preview – as well as to reveal the names of all the short stories I’d like to show you the cover, designed by my lovely husband:

A Season To Remember – our gift to you this Christmas.

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A Season To Remember Blog Hop Season

There are times when you meet people you feel like you’ve known them for years – in some respects it’s like coming home.

So it waswhen I met authors Susanne Bellamy, Noelle Clark and Eva Scott. It was at lunch in April at a lovely restaurant that overlooked the Brisbane skyline. We’re all south-east Queensland locals, all authors and now great friends.

And, as these things happen, someone mentions, ‘oh wouldn’t it be great to do an anthology together’ and before you know it, a theme has been decided and we were on our way.

Out late November will be our debut short story anthology called:

A Season To Remember

Short and sweet, each story features three elements:

Christmas
The Sea
Romance

Man, what a treat we have for you:

A Touch of Christmas by Susanne Bellamy – Set 500 years in the future, are Colonel Nick’s efforts enough to give the Earth a second chance?
All That Glitters by Eva Scott – Always the bridesmaid and never the bride? Molly, a hard-working Gold Coast nurse finds an unexpected ally in her plans to thwart her gold-digging step-mother’s plans for her sister’s society wedding from hell.
Sands of Time by Noelle Clark – Christmas brings love, heart-ache and memories for Kitty. A beautiful and poignant story set in Brisbane, Queensland.
And finally, mine Three Ships by Elizabeth Ellen Carter. Set in 1806, a wild storm on the Devon brings bootleggers and handsome Navy lieutenant to Laura’s lighthouse on St Joseph’s Rock.

You can find out more directly from the heroines in our story on Eva Scott’s blog over the next two weeks.

Catch up with Kitty from Sands of Time here: “I live in a blue, chamfer-board beach house on the cliff top overlooking Dugong Point reserve – a lovely bay side recreation area about a 40 minute drive from Brisbane.”

Catch up with Captain Andra Deshivya Veluthian here: “I am Captain Andra Deshivya Veluthian, on my first promotion assignment in command of starship Bluefire. My home planet is Gravlar, which oversees this quadrant of our galaxy.“

Check out Eva’s blog in coming weeks for the next two installments. Then, in September enjoy some short story extras on Noelle Clark’s blog as the characters from our stories meet and mingle!

In October please join me back here for a little party where we authors talk about the fun and different things we learned as we wrote our stories. Then in November, head over to Susanne Bellamy’s blog for a pre-Christmas feast with recipes!

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Hunky Heroes – All Shook Up

This is a picture of EE Carter’s husband.

He’s every man you wish you man could be – just like the Old Spice  commercial.

He’s our secret lover, our book boyfriend. He is every romantic fantasy rolled into one.

Can you identify them all?

Have you ever imagined what every book boyfriend would be like if you rolled up every type of romantic leading man into one?

I did and came up with this image here.

It’s a picture of my husband.

Stop laughing.

It is truly… sure, he might be hard pressed to see the resemblance himself, but he is my romantic hero.

I wrote a piece a few weeks back about the allure of the book boyfriend, so I won’t repeat it – you can check out the link here.

But I thought the image was too funny not to share.

Who I have missed out? Put your comments in answers below and if I get enough, I’ll create another PhotoShop montage mash-up!

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Scarlett Women

One of the interesting things about reading reviews of romance novels is discovering a common complaint and it goes something like this:

“I really hate the heroine, I wanted to throw the book across the room”

Ouch!

Considering that romance novels are largely written by women for women, it seems to be a surprise that some authors get so wrong.

Now I should clarify here by saying some authors write heroines who are deliberately difficult and unsympathetic  and do it well, but I would argue for the majority of romance readers, we want to relate and identify with the heroines. We insert ourselves into these love stories we want to make sure that the hero and the heroine are worthy of their happily-ever-afters.

But it seems I’m not alone in noticing that not all romantic heroines are created equal.

It seems that some romance heroines fall into one of two deadly traps.

She’s TSTL!

As in ‘Too Stupid To Live’ – she’s the heroine who makes every dumb move under the sun and then some. She’s the type that has you rooting for the villain and feeling pity for the hero.

Keira Gillett sums up reader frustration with a TSTL heroine here:

A TSTL heroine does stupid things. She just can’t seem to help it. Like the dumb females in horror movies who always go the wrong way, a TSTL heroine follows the tradition of unthinking idiocy. She’ll run away from the hero and into a nest of bad guys. During a rescue attempt she’ll force the hero to pause in the middle of gunfire for a cross examination of his heart. And she won’t be drugged, like in Knight and Day, which makes that scenario funny.

 

She’s  such a bitch!

You can cut glass with that expression

What’s intriguing to me  is that the bitchy romantic heroine is not a deal breaker.

She’s the selfish, angry, narcissistic, unempathetic woman who excuses her nastiness under  new names like, ‘empowered’, ‘single-minded’, determined.

In fact there is a whole sub-section of romance readers who really, really, really like them.

But there is a huge caveat which gives a hint at why these heroines are a guilty pleasure for some:

Can any one suggest some books that have heroines who are: bitchy, nasty, arrogant, snobish (sic), all those unlovable qualities. Whether it’s real or a mask, historical or contemporary doesn’t matter as long as she eventually changes her attitude, preferably is tamed by the hero.

Calling Dr Freud…

I have to confess that I used to love the super bitchy hero, instead of just watching Gone With The Wind (which I did at the age of 14) I also read the book (which I still have). As a teenage girl, Scarlett O’Hara was smart, quick-witted, tempestuous, driven and, as depicted by Vivien Leigh, breathtakingly beautiful.

But when I re-read the book in by early 20s, I found my attitude had begun to change. The uncontrolled emotional turmoil that resonated with me as a teenager was seen as pointless and self-destructive as I grew into adulthood.

When you really think about it, Scarlett was not a character to admire at all:

She abandons two of her four children
She marries a man she does not love for revenge
She relentlessly pursues a married man
She steals her sister’s beau and ends up getting the man killed
She is motivated by jealousy, hate  and fear
She’s reckless
She’s an alcoholic

By the time Rhett tells her, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.” I cheered the man on.

What a gorgeous smile. You want Miss Melly on your side.

That’s not to say that Gone With the Wind is not a wonderful novel – it is most certainly deserving of its iconic status – but the true heroine is not the green-eyed coquette. Scarlett O’Hara is a magnificently drawn anti-hero but she cannot hold a candle to the true heroine of novel.

If we take the same qualities that we like to apply to our heroes – brave, thoughtful, resilient, honest, virtuous – then the real heroine of Gone With the Wind is… Melanie Wilkes.

She welcomes Scarlett into the family, knowing that the other woman doesn’t like her.
Defends Scarlett’s scandalous decision to dance with Rhett Butler while still in mourning for her husband (Melanie’s beloved brother).
She works at nursing and is much more compassionate at it than Scarlett is.
Works hard to save Tara – even helps Scarlett remove the body of the Union soldier that Scarlett was forced to kill in self-defence.
Publicly acknowledges prostitute Belle Watling for providing an alibi for Rhett, Ashley and Frank who formed a posse to kill the man who tried to rape Scarlett when other women (including Scarlett) are mortified and resentful.
Defends Scarlett against the gossips who claim she is having an affair with her husband.
Provides Scarlett with sage advice while on her death bed: “Be kind to Captain Butler. He loves you so.”

Despite the contempt with which Scarlett treats her one-time sister-in-law, Melanie is a much more interesting character. She is the type of woman whom you’d want as a friend. Hers was a quiet strength borne out of steadfastness and love.

As Rhett observed: “She never had any strength. She’s never had anything but heart.”

How to write a great romantic heroine

Unless you’re deliberately going down the anti-heroine route, we want our heroines as someone we can like, if not identify with but that doesn’t mean that she has to be a Miss Goodie-Two-Shoes milksop.

I’ve just finished writing one of the most complex heroines, Lady Abigail Houghall. She was one of the villains in Moonstone Obsession and she is going to be the heroine in my newly completed manuscript Moonstone Conspiracy.

This is what I learned through the process of turning an anti-heroine into a heroine in her own right. Even without Abigail’s complex back story, every romantic heroine worth cheering on should have these qualities.

She may not be perfect, but she acknowledges her faults.
She doesn’t blame anyone else for adverse situations, she acknowledges that they are of own making.
She is willing to do battle with her inner-demons. She may not always win, but you have to give the girl points for trying.
Where possible she will try to do the right thing – even if it costs (financially, her reputation, her ‘face’, her happiness) to do it
She will roll up her shirtsleeves to get the job done. She doesn’t shirk her responsibilities or runs away from them.
She will also acknowledge that she can’t do it alone. She will not reveal her vulnerability to everyone, but with her hero she knows she is safe and will lay herself bare – physically, emotionally, spiritually

In her own way our romantic heroines should be as chivalrous and valorous as the heroes. That doesn’t require physical strength or brute force because the evils that we conquer and the dragons that we slay are not external, they are within.

And now, a little Adam Ant.

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Meet Lady Alfreya of Tyrswick

I’ve been tagged by the fellow Etopia Author Nikki Dee Houston to take part in this fun little blog hop. Each week an author is tagged. Follow the link and discover more about a character in either an upcoming title or a work in progress.

Next week I tag Amy Rose Bennett!

See where all of this began :MEET MY CHARACTER BLOG TOUR authorcharmainegordon.wordpress.com

Meet Lady Alfreya of Tyrswick

Late summer 1077.

Character inspiration: Meet Lady Alfreya of Tyrswick

Greetings, my name is Lady Alfreya of Tyrswick, I’m an 11th Century Saxon noblewoman and I’m finally home where I belong, but getting home hasn’t been easy.

You see, seven years ago my father Earl Alfred threw in his lot with other Saxon Earls to rebel against King William – you might know him as William The Conqueror.

To my father and his friends, he was known as William The Bastard.Their rebellion didn’t end well. In fact, King William laid waste to 360 square miles of north England countryside to punish the rebels. Many people were killed.

I might have been one of them if not for a moment of compassion by a Norman squire who allowed me, my father and my younger brother to escape.

You’d think my father would be grateful. But he wasn’t. We managed to escape to Scotland where King Malcolm III himself harboured ambition to invade England. Even seven years later, my father was ready to join another rebellion egged on by Lord Drefan d’Aumont.

The very name causes me to shudder. Don’t be fooled by his handsome face, the man is rotten to the core. And he is used to taking what he wants. Drefan convinced my father that, with his help, he could retake Tyrswick, our ancestral home.

He didn’t reckon on the might and prowess of Sebastian de la Croix the young Norman Baron who was given Tyrswick by William himself. He’s handsome too – if you like Normans. I saw him up close once, but don’t tell him that – what man would kindly to the fact that a woman can be as effective with a long bow and crossbow as he is?

Last spring my father was killed in a skirmish. Our remaining forces fled and I encouraged my companion, Diera to go also. I gave her a small gold ring engraved with the Tyrswick cipher as a keepsake. I haven’t seen her in six weeks. I hope she is well and safe back in Scotland.

Now my younger brother has been injured – an iron rabbit trap of all things – part of a series of misfortunes that have plagued us since father’s death and yet there has been no sign of Drefan and his promised reinforcements despite the letters I write him. Damn him. Damn that man to hell.

I have been left with no choice but to surrender my father’s remain forces and offer myself as de la Croix’s hostage in order to guarantee my brother safe passage to see the healers at St Cuthbert’s Monastery. Without their help, my brother will be dead within a week.

I must end our interview. My two trusted men-at-arms Larcwide and Orlege have just reported back, de la Croix has agreed to a parley. He doesn’t yet know that my father is dead. De la Croix will be expecting to see him. Won’t he be surprised when sees me instead?

Warrior’s Surrender – to be published by Etopia Press, November 7


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Hop To It

Edit kitty is editing

One of the biggest traps for newcomers to romance writing is head hopping and point of view switches.

I know it is something I struggled with Moonstone Obsession.

Actually, I didn’t know I had a problem with it until I received some excellent critiquing from the judges of the Romance Writers of Australia’s Emerald Awards for unpublished manuscripts and received a lovely rejection letter from a publisher.

Fortunately the wonderful team at Etopia Press decided to take a punt on a new author and assigned a patient editor to work me through the manuscript.

After the initial rejection I was askance, to put it mildly. I read a lot of classic and literary fiction where the authors often play fast and loose with the perspective – Kurt Vonnegut and John Fowles are two authors which come readily to mind – even Agatha Christie and Ruth Rendell’s work has some ‘head hopping’.

If you’re not sure what I’m talking about regarding ‘head hopping’ and POV switching, then author Annie Grace has an excellent primer.

One of the most difficult things new writers struggle with is managing character point of view [POV]. It is difficult partly because some of the conventions surrounding its use are relatively new.

Many of the classics of literature used the omniscient POV — a narrator told the story. Sometimes the narrator was the author, sometimes it was the main character. sometimes it was someone else. The omniscient authorial voice has become virtually obsolete in modern fiction (with some exceptions).

In modern fiction, particularly popular fiction, the story is most frequently told through the eyes of the stakeholders – one or more central POV characters. In romance, it is the hero and heroine’s POV we expect to see. Rarely are other character’s P’sOV included, though there is no “rule” against it.

Queensland’s own historical romance queen – the wonderful Anna Campbell goes into more detail in this excellent article.

Skilful use of point of view is a really powerful technique for drawing out suspense and creating a compelling story that will keep your reader sitting up past midnight to finish the story. And isn’t that just what we want?

Indeed!

Bouncy, bounce

I was still learning about this process doing the edits for Moonstone Obsession while writing Warrior’s Surrender (to be published on November 7). While Warrior’s Surrender’s first draft was free from head-hopping, I did have several characters with deeper points of view than is generally accepted in romance where the POV is from the hero, the heroine and a sufficiently motivated villain.

Again, working with my wonderful editor, this issue was overcome by pulling back on the POV and making those scenes (in which the hero and heroine are absent) simply tell itself without articulating their motivations through the use of internal dialogue.

What is said and done occurs as though the reader is standing in the corner of the room watching the byplay. They are eavesdroppers.

What has surprised me is how much more suspenseful those scenes have become because of the lack of POV.  The reader will have to guess those characters feelings and motivations – and therefore guess their next move against our hero and heroine.

This also has the added benefit of ensuring the deep emotional connection given to Lady Alfreya and Baron Sebastian de la Croix through viewing the story from their point of view and that it will resonates (I hope!) even stronger with the reader.

I hope this slightly different perspective on the subject will encourage new writers to avoid thinking that limited POV is restrictive and actually see it for what it is – an opportunity to make the reader empathise and fall in love with the hero and heroine as they fall in love and enjoy the suspense created by those characters who would thwart them and then enjoy the satisfaction of a Happily Ever After.

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Man Up!

Colin Firth as Mr Darcy – passion, violence and dominance under the veneer of civilisation. A civilisation that he has cultivated in himself.

One of the reasons why I enjoy writing romantic fiction is I love men.

Yes indeed. Oh I bet you thought that romance was all about women. Well it’s not and I’ve made mention of that before.

At its heart, romance is about fascination, passion, dedication – perhaps in some cases bordering on the obsessive, as the object of one’s heart becomes all consuming.

It is also grand in scope – the medieval chivalric romances of the High Middle Ages centred not just on romantic or courtly love between the hero and heroine, but was also filled with adventure, mystery, honour and drama.
It keeps us riveted to the very final chapter, the very final word.
Romance is life itself.
Romance is accessible.
If the blokes in your life don’t believe me, then there is this: Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott is a romance and I would argue that Die Hard is a romance of that same chivalric milieu.

To be sure, we love our romantic heroines, those feisty feminine archetypes on whom we like to project our ambitions and desires. But I would suggest the real reason we love romance is because we love our men – our dark, dangerous, heroic, gallant, passionate gents who set our pulse racing.

Why?

Because they are so gosh-darn different to us.

I found this article today and I was struck by how wonderfully it articulated man’s struggle for dominance and power – not over others, not over women, but over himself:

A girl simply grows into a woman, or so most believe, whereas a man is something that is made. He is made because his masculinity consists in the destruction of his own nature, not in the maturity of it. He is born subject to a slew of desires, some more despicable, such as an unbridled lust for sex and drink, and some more acceptable, such as a desire for fame and affirmation. Though some of these passions are perhaps less unbecoming than others, they all make the man a slave for as long as he is in thrall to them and acts according to them.

The act of being a man is realized when all such things are put under the rule of his will and are broken with a rod of iron; when he is no longer driven by his lusts as the Greeks would term it, or the flesh as it would be known among Christians, but rather commands them. Such is the dominance which is to be acquired by the power of his will and reason, and the acquisition of such dominance is called among us “virtue,” which is merely Latin for “manliness.” (If you do not believe me, note that the root of the word is the same as that of virile; vir, meaning “an adult male.”)

Do yourself a favour and read all of it. It just may change the way you think about men.

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Tuesday Book Club – Lady Beauchamp’s Proposal with Amy Rose Bennett

Chesterfield couch, in royal purple – just perfect for our distinguished guest on tonight’s show.

I’m thrilled to have Amy Rose Bennett as my special guest on the purple couch as we talk gothic regency noir! Her latest book Lady Beauchamp’s proposal is out now and I can’t wait to get stuck into this myself!

Welcome Amy!

To set the scene for today’s chat, let’s share a little about the book:

A runaway countess finds love when she least expects it…but she can’t hide from her past forever.

Elizabeth, Lady Beauchamp, fears for her life. When she discovers her dissolute and long-estranged husband has syphilis—and he wants to beget an heir no matter the cost—she flees to a remote part of Scotland to begin a new life as the widowed governess, Mrs. Beth Eliott at Eilean Tor Castle.

When Mrs. Eliott unexpectedly arrives on his doorstep, the reclusive and recently widowed Marquess of Rothsburgh is both irritated and intrigued. No longer in need of a governess—his young daughter now resides with his sister’s family in Edinburgh—he proposes the beautiful widow fill a position of a different kind…

Torn between staying true to her marriage vows and her wanton attraction to the devilishly handsome marquess, Elizabeth struggles against the temptation to become his mistress. But living a lie is not easy when you have fallen in love. And secrets always have a way of coming out…

1. How do you balance the light and shade in your story – especially when the premise really is deliciously noir?

Good question! There are some quite dark, as well as taboo topics within my story—namely deceit, adultery, allusions to debauchery (Elizabeth’s husband Hugh is the epitome of the hardened, dissolute reprobate; I think rake is too light a word for him!), emotional abuse and the highly contagious, venereal disease syphilis. So not the usual fare for many Regencies, especially the traditional type!

The prologue has quite a menacing feel about it, I think. I really wanted to create an undercurrent of tension; there is the threat of spousal rape in the air, but even worse than that, the heroine knows she will be exposed to the deadly ‘pox’ if her husband gets his way. Hence her need to desert Hugh and go into hiding. The heroine—by taking on a new identity, Mrs. Beth Eliott—also misrepresents herself for a good deal of the novel, so it will be interesting to see how readers react to her duplicity. Will they agree it is a necessary evil on her part to protect herself, or condemn her? And how will they view her decision to forsake her marriage vows when she meets the man who is everything she’s ever wanted? My story is a little bit of a morality tale, isn’t it?

I think the main element that balances out all this darkness and deceit is the strength of the central love story between Elizabeth/Beth and James Huntly, the Marquess of Rothsburgh. I’m hoping readers will see that these two are really meant for each other, despite all of the significant obstacles thrown in their way. In a way, their love for each other is a light in the darkness around them.

I’ve tried to incorporate banter into many of the conversational exchanges between Beth and Rothsburgh to lighten the mood of the story. There are also a few humorous moments at various points along the way that provide a little ‘light comic relief’. There’s one episode in particular, revolving around hairpins of all things, that I didn’t plan, and it still amuses me when I read over it. After one emotionally-charged scene, my heroine actually took over (as characters sometimes do). It was as if she was saying ‘enough of this serious stuff, lighten up, already!’.

The hero, Rothsburgh, also has a lot of beta qualities—he’s caring, humorous, and isn’t afraid to admit he’s in love (when he realizes it) even after being grievously betrayed by his first wife. I wanted him to be the antithesis of Beth’s dark-souled husband, Hugh. Beth sure wasn’t going to fall in love with another arrogant, alpha-male blackguard! Overall, I think both Beth and Rothsburgh have good hearts and deserve to have a happy-ever-after together! And as it is a romance, there is a guaranteed light at the end of the dark tunnel.

2. Was it easy to progress the courtship between your hero and heroine considering the baggage each of them bring to their relationship?

I don’t know if it was exactly easy…there were some moments in writing this story when I wondered if I had bitten off more than I could chew! That being said, I had a really clear idea of the romantic arc that both the hero and heroine would follow and the internal conflicts and external obstacles to their HEA when I plotted this story. So the courtship just kind of flowed when I got going. But it’s fair to say—as you’ve mentioned—that both Beth and Rothsburgh have a lot of internal conflict and baggage, given their past histories!

Beth and Rothsburgh are both quite lonely characters—both have experienced unhappy marriages. Their mutual sexual attraction draws them together initially; in fact, both of them (individually) convince themselves that their affair is only about sex at the beginning—although it’s evident they are also attracted to each other for other reasons.

Given that Beth commits adultery—a huge no-no back then, and pretty much a taboo trope in a romance novel even today—I decided that I needed to put her and Rothsburgh in a setting—an isolated Scottish castle—and situation where the normal rules of society didn’t seem to apply anymore to kick-start the relationship. I quite deliberately threw them together in such a way that the social mores of the time needed to be tossed out the window (but I won’t spoil how I did this).

Beth does a fair amount of soul-searching when she is sorely tempted by Lord Rothsburgh’s invitation to become his mistress. She also has to deal with the consequences of having lied to and deceived the man she falls in love with—particularly after she realizes Rothsburgh may have feelings for her as well. She doesn’t have an easy time of it and certainly wrestles with her conscience!

Rothsburgh, given that his first wife was unfaithful to him, has definite trust issues. After Beth arrives at his castle, Eilean Tor, he resists the idea that he could be falling in love—he tries to delude himself that he is just randy as hell! I don’t want to reveal too much more about the plot, but I’m sure readers will be able to see the storm coming—that when Rothsburgh finds out the woman he cares about is an adulteress, it may not go down too well…

The obstacles, seem insurmountable…but there is a little bit of a plot twist (which I don’t want to spoil) that progresses the relationship between Beth and Rothsburgh! You’ll have to read my book to find out what it is…

3. How much research did you do into the disease that our heroine’s husband had? The second Earl of Rochester, one of Charles II’s favourites died at the age of 32 from the disease and tertiary syphilis has been associated with extreme behaviour and mental illness.

Oh Elizabeth, I’ve seen the Johnny Depp movie ‘The Libertine’ which is about the Earl of Rochester, and that man’s end was just nasty!

I did conduct a fair bit of research into this dreadful bacterial disease, also known as ‘the pox’, or ‘the grandgore’ in Scotland (that name does seem fitting!). From what I understand, syphilis was quite rampant amongst prostitutes and there were occasional deadly outbreaks in Europe e.g. during the Renaissance. For this story, I needed to know about the disease’s transmission, and it’s progression i.e. incubation periods and the symptoms/complications at the various stages—there are three: initial, secondary, and tertiary. Hugh, Beth’s husband, is in the initial stages of ‘the pox’ at the start of the story, and progresses to the secondary stage later on. The time taken to progress through the three stages of untreated syphilis can vary a bit. In fact, the tertiary stage takes some time to reach—some 5-20 years after the initial infection (although medical references vary). As you mentioned, late stage syphilis is characterized by some pretty nasty consequences—heart disease, tumours and neurological/brain damage that can result in insanity, and ultimately, death. Thankfully these days, antibiotics can effectively treat the disease. There are many famous historical figures that have been rumoured to have suffered from syphilis including Napolean Bonaparte, Beau Brummel, Tolstoy, Oscar Wilde, the composer Franz Schubert, and the painters Edouard Manet and Van Gogh! In my story, Rothsburgh mentions to Beth that Mary, Queen of Scots’ second husband, Lord Darnley, may have had syphilis as they take a tour of the ill-fated queen’s palace, Holyrood, in Edinburgh.

4. Which film version of Jane Eyre is your favourite and why?

I’m not sure if I have a favourite! I think the 1970 version of the movie starring George C. Scott and Susannah York was the first I ever saw when I was about nine (I’m not sure what I would think of it now though. I’m sure it would seem quite dated). I was absolutely entranced by the story and immediately borrowed the book from our primary school’s library, but I’m sure I didn’t understand half of it. I love the novel to this day and I really think Jane Eyre was what inspired me to want to write historical romance. I’ve also seen the 1943 version starring Orson Wells and Joan Fontaine, although Orson Wells wasn’t quite my cup of tea for Mr. Rochester. I would dearly love to watch the recent 2011 adaptation—I’ve seen the screen kiss between Michael Fassbender’s Mr. Rochester and Mia Wasikowska’s Jane—oh my gosh, that was indeed sigh-worthy!

 

Find out more!

Author Website: http://amyrosebennett.com

Buy link: http://www.secretcravingspublishing.com

Lady Beauchamp’s Proposal on Amazon

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Hit And Myth

A medieval world map. It is spherical.

This week, I was asked an interesting question from a person I met for the first time at a work conference:

“Why do you write the time periods you do?”

Coming on the back of a fascinating post by fellow historical romance writer Nicole Hurley-Moore this week, I’ve given some thought to that question.

And this is my answer:

“To open up the doors of our past. To present factual history in a way which is engaging  and exciting. To remind people that what happened in our past has a direct and measurable bearing on the world as it is today.”

Sadly some educators do students a disservice by making history a dull recitation of people, dates and places – as Nicole beautifully illustrates:

History was something that happened ‘back then’… in a time when people weren’t so civilized (as if we are now) or generally not so clever (an idea bandied about by 19th century scholars. Oh, there were a few exceptions but really no one could ever be as clever as them).

 Now, I have always loved history, especially the medieval kind but even my resolve was pushed. One teacher (who was a lovely woman but…) would barely speak to us. She would divide the chalk board in half and begin writing the entire lesson – 50 minutes of ceaseless writing. Oh, and once she got to the end of the board, she would rub it off and then keep writing.

Other educators – particularly the ones who establish curriculum to be taught in schools - are slavishly addicted to the concept of relevance which means we can’t tax the brains of the younger generation with anything which is outside their limited life experience.

Not only does that do a disservice it also helps promulgate myths and lies associated with the past.

They suffer, as CS Lewis beautifully describes (and admits he suffered from himself), the snobbery of chronology:

Barfield never made me an Anthroposophist, but his counterattacks destroyed forever two elements in my own thought. In the first place he made short work of what I have called my “chronological snobbery,” the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited. You must find why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where, and how conclusively) or did it merely die away as fashions do? If the latter, this tells us nothing about its truth or falsehood. From seeing this, one passes to the realization that our own age is also “a period,” and certainly has, like all periods, its own characteristic illusions. They are likeliest to lurk in those widespread assumptions which are so ingrained in the age that no one dares to attack or feels it necessary to defend them.

My relatively recent discovery of one of these myths had me delving back into history and looking into original sources and from that research, two very different novels from two very different time periods were born – Moonstone Obsession and the upcoming Warrior’s Surrender.

The Popular Myth:

In medieval times, people thought the world was flat. It wasn’t until Christopher Columbus shocked the world by trying to sail to India – going in the wrong direction! – that people then knew the world was round.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, false, wrong.

So where did the myth come from?

The myth came a mix of a political bastardisation of academic integrity and popular fiction.

The academic was Antoinne-Jean Letronne, a French archaeologist and author who was well known for his anti-Catholic, atheistic writings, no doubt influenced by the socio-political French Revolutionary climate of the late 18th/early 19th century:

He wrote On the Cosmographical Ideas of the Church Fathers in 1834.

He deliberately misrepresented medieval Christians as being scientifically ignorant, and his supposed proof for this incorrect claim was that they believed in a flat earth. But of course they did not believe in a flat earth.

In France at the same time and no doubt influenced by the intellectual climate was the American writer Washington Irving.

Oddly enough, a major source of that mythology was the genial American creator of Rip van Winkle and Ichabod Crane. In 1828, Washington Irving published a novelistic biography of Columbus featuring a fictitious confrontation between the brave explorer and Inquisition-ridden clerics and professors from the University of Salamanca. They pelted Columbus with quotations from the Bible and church fathers to prove that the Earth was flat. Samuel Eliot Morison, in his biography of Columbus, calls the episode “pure moonshine.”

Irving the storyteller had his academic counterpart in the French historian Antoine-Jean Letronne. Letronne’s influential 1834 study, “On the Cosmographical Opinions of the Church Fathers,” was shaped by anti-clericalism just as Irving’s imagination was colored by Anglo-American anti-Catholic and anti-Spanish feeling. Letronne acknowledged evidence that appeared to contradict his thesis but promptly buried it as untypical. Church fathers and medieval Christians simply must have been hide-bound by prejudice and a literal reading of the Bible.

Well, as another late 19th  American author is quoted as saying:

“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes”

And by the end of the 19th century it was being taught in text books to school children and perpetuated even today by renowned 20th century historians like Daniel Boorstin (whose book America: The Colonial Experience I have and adore).

The value of literary fiction to reveal aspects of human nature and reveal historical truths – I talk about it in my blog post here.

That’s why I was fascinated by the history of the Regency period and then by extension the much-maligned medieval period which, ironically, founded the era of scientific investigation and modern universities.

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