Meredith Bond's Blog, page 16

Discoverability?

I’m hearing about it all the time in the blogs now because no one knows how it works. We’re all searching for the magic bullet and so far no one has found it.

Readers want an easy way to find books; authors want an easy way to find readers. No one knows where to find the other. We need some kind of dating service.

So many people have tried or are trying to come up with a solution, but so far it’s really been hit or miss – sometimes you come across something interesting, most times you don’t. One client of mine wants to create a Goodreads type of website, but without the trolls. He envisions a place where readers and authors can get together to discuss books in a calm, happy and productive way. I imagine it being sort of like your favorite book-club, but on-line. People read a book and recommend it. People who like a similar genre will somehow be steered toward either the person recommending or the book itself.

The trick is that Goodreads tried this. It worked for a while, until the nasties moved in and started attacking books, authors and then each other. Now it’s not a pleasant place to go and I know a good number of people who avoid it all together.

Amazon has it’s automated suggestions – people who bought this also bought. That actually works a lot of time. But it leaves the authors out of it. A new author can’t make a suggestion saying “I’m coming out with a new book. People who liked this book by this other author would like mine.”

There are the hundreds (thousands?) of blogs for readers by readers where authors can come and submit books for consideration – to be reviewed, usually. There are loads of websites for indie authors to join and upload descriptions of their books. I have yet to make a connection on any of these blogs to an actual reader despite the fact that they claim to make that possible.

I find books to read through my friends’ postings on Facebook (I may be a writer, but I’m also an avid reader, as good writer should be). That doesn’t mean that I only read my friends’ books, because I have wonderful friends who promote their friends books, or just books they’ve read and loved. I also happen to have a friend who reads and writes reviews of romance novels for Kirkus – her suggestions are always taken very seriously, naturally.

But I’m always searching for a new way, another way, to find books and allow readers to find mine—and I don’t think that Bookbub is the answer.

Where do you find books to read? Have you been successful in getting your books into the hands of those who you’re pretty sure want to read it and aren’t just buying it because it’s free or on sale for .99? Is there a solution to book discoverability or are we just going to continue floundering around in the dark for years to come? Thoughts?

Method Writing

Constantin Stalislovski

There is method in my madness. And, yes, I had to write that. I had no choice.

I not only have people talking in my head, as most writers do, but I become those people when I write.

The great acting teacher Constantin Stalislavski taught actors to embody the character they portray. To use their own personal experiences to truly feel what the character is going through and become that person.

Writers can do the same, and I argue, should do the same. How else are you to write believable people?

Does that mean that I have to be a man to write from a man’s point of view? Do I need to be blind to write a blind character? A thoroughly evil person to write the cruelty of my antagonist? Obviously not. But I do have to understand that person. I have to be able to live in their head for a little while. To understand what they do and why they do it. I have to think like them, reason like them, and, on paper, act like them. It’s the only way their words and actions will ring true to my reader.

Do I do this for every character I write? I couldn’t possibly. I do, however, do it for every POV character I write. When I write from someone’s point of view, I need to be able to think like them since it is their thoughts which I’m relating. I, therefore, need to become them while I’m writing.

I thoroughly enjoyed acting when I was in college. Some even said I was pretty good at it. I expect it’s because I’ve got such a vivid imagination and can shed myself to take on the persona of another. And so I use that skill when I’m writing. It gives me a vicarious life that is nearly as much fun as when I read another’s work where they have written their characters so convincingly that I can live that character’s life while reading the book – where they employed “method writing”.

So how do you do this? (Because I am ever the practical writing teacher – it’s never enough to point out something in writing, but I’ve got to teach others to do it themselves). Well, when I was in college acting in plays, we would spend the first ten minutes of each rehearsal laying flat on our backs on the floor relaxing. We would relax every muscle in our body concentrating on each group of muscles so completely that our minds would have no choice but to empty of everything else. By the time we were done relaxing not only were our bodies putty so as to be able to take on the movement and stance of the character we were playing, but our minds were free of our own lives so that we could take on the life of our character.

I don’t do that anymore, I’m sorry to say (because I could probably use a good ten minutes of thorough relaxation). Instead, I think about the life my POV character has led. I think (and sometimes write) about their childhood, their family situation, the wonderful highs and horrific lows that made them who they are at the time of my story. I assemble the person in my mind and then place them in the situation I’m writing. I think about how they would react to all that they are going through in this scene. I engulf myself in this person and their life to become that person. To think the way they would. And then I begin to write – in the first person, no matter how my text is going to end up (if I need to switch to third person later, I do that when I read through and edit my work). This way I write completely from within that character’s mind as if what is happening to them is happening to me. That is truly deep writing. That is method writing.

How do you get deeply into your character’s mind? Do you try to become the character you’re writing or keep one step distant?

And just as little side-note, after I had the idea to write today’s blog on method writing, I looked to see if I’d ever written about it before. Turns out I have – exactly this week, two years ago! I wrote about first drafts and discussed, briefly, method writing. Here’s the link to that blog posting, in case you’re interested.

Present Tense, Second Person

You’re sitting down to write your book. You know it’s going to be a great book. You’ve been thinking about for a while now and you think you’ve got it all planned out in your head. You’ve even done some planning on paper, so you are all set to go, ready to dive in and get started.

You sit down in front of your computer, open a new Word document and start typing. Wow, those words are flowing! This is great! Every day for a week, you spend an hour, sometimes two, working on your book. It’s going so well, you’re thrilled with your characters, with your story, and with yourself. You knew you had it in you. Your book is going so well, you decide to take the weekend off and then get back to it first thing Monday evening after work.

Monday rolls around, but before you get started on your book, you pause to read what you’ve got written, just to remind yourself of where you stopped. Wait a minute, you think. This… this sounds odd. Something’s not quite right with your story, but you just can’t put your finger on it.

You think about for a minute, and then— ah ha! You’ve written in the present tense! Wow, that’s… um, kind of cool. Different. You think this is really going to go well. Your reader can really feel this in the now. But is it really good?

You open up a couple of books you’ve read and loved. Huh. They’re all written in the past tense: “John walked into the bar. He couldn’t believe his eyes, but there was Sandra just the way he’d left her nearly twenty years ago.”

That reads normally. You turn back to your own work. “John walks into the bar. He can’t believe his eyes but there is Sandra just the way he left her nearly twenty years ago.” Sounds a little funny. But good. This will work. So you continue writing. In fact, you write your entire story in the present tense.

And then you give it to your best friend to read.

“Whoa!” she says. “This is weird! Do you know you’ve written this in the present tense, second person?”

“What?” you ask. Uh, yeah, you knew you wrote it in the present tense. Oh, and second person? “Shouldn’t I do that?”

“No,” she says, as if you just asked if you should go bungee jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge without a bungee cord.

“But it’s different! Interesting!” you argue.

“And weird and I’m not reading it,” she says, handing your masterpiece back to you. “Yes, it works,” she concedes, seeing the hurt look in your eyes. “But I just can’t imagine reading an entire book written this way.”

You rethink this because you truly value your friend’s opinion and if she has this opinion, maybe others will too. But you don’t want to rewrite the entire book! But you sigh and sit down at your computer to do so anyway because you really want people to read and enjoy your book. Yes, this is your first attempt at writing a book, so maybe, just maybe it would be a good idea to follow the standards of fiction—but just for this book, you think. Next book, I am definitely going to write in the present tense… or not.

Making It Big In 6 Easy Steps

How did the Romance Writers of America’s magazine know that I needed some marketing tips? Well, maybe because all authors always need marketing tips? In today’s publishing industry, marketing is left to every author, whether they’re traditionally published or indie-published. But the Romance Writer’s Report, this month (November, 2013) had a great article on marketing that I think applies to everyone who publishes, not only romance authors.

Writing a book is hard. Editing it is harder. Getting all the pieces together, if you’re going to self-publish—not easy. But marketing is something that nearly everyone agrees is harder than any of these.

Now, I don’t usually read articles about people who’ve “made it”. Frankly, it depresses me. However, in this month’s RWR, there was an article written by Valerie Bowman on thirteen authors who’ve recently made the top lists (NYTimes, USA Today). They talked about how long it took them to get there, and how they did it. Really useful stuff!

The first thing that made me feel good about this article was that only two of the thirteen had their first book make it to the top lists. Two were on their fifth book, two their ninth, and it went up from there. One author had 40 books – 40!! – before she made the top lists. That’s incredible staying power. Kudos to her!

But the best thing about the article was what these authors said they did to get their books on to these lists – and many are something any author can do. Here are the ones the really resonated with me:

One author said that she posted excerpts of their book for months leading up to the sale of the book to get and keep readers excited about her upcoming release.
Some had bloggers—as many as 300 in one day!—blogging about her book on the day it was released.
Another dropped the price of her book to .99 a week after it was released and kept it there for ten days.
One said that for her, it was all in the timing of her release. Many authors release books in November and December to hit the Christmas buying season, this author released her book in April when there wasn’t as much competition. Smart!
Some advertised on Facebook and Goodreads.
And, finally, almost all agreed that having a fantastic cover was key to selling their book.

These are all things that are pretty easy for your average author to do—yes, that means you and me. Well, ok, having 300 bloggers talking about your book on one particular day is probably a little out of reach, but you could probably have ten or twenty. Probably, if you go with a company that organizes such things, many more. What a great way to create buzz. And that’s what we want to do. Create buzz. Get people talking about our book. The more people talk about it, the more people will buy it.

Sounds good to me! Thank you Valerie Bowman for writing such a useful article. And thank you to all the authors who were so open and honest about how you achieved your (clearly) well deserved success.

Now, what are you going to do to ensure that your book is as successful as it can possibly be?

Next week, Nina will be back with part two of her blog on commas! Look out for it next weekend!

Making a book the best it can be

I’ve been talking a lot about grammar recently (or rather, having my editor do so) because it’s vitally important that you have as close to perfect grammar as possible in the book you’re going to publish. But it’s not only your grammar that has to be perfect, your whole book has to be that way. That means that your writing craft as to be as perfect as possible as well.

I’ve written about story structure a number of times on this blog, so I won’t do so again today (here is a link to a posting on the topic ) even though without a strong structure, you know that your story just won’t work well. Instead, I want to go over a few of the areas of craft I always have to check for – and by check, I mean print out the entire manuscript (studiously ignoring the waste of paper because this is really important to actually print it out – you catch so much more when something’s in print, in your hand).  This is, in essence my work plan for the next week – yes, week, because I plan to go through my manuscript many times over the next few days.

Each time I go through my manuscript it will be with one highlighter in hand (each time I do so, the color of the highlighter will change). I will look for one thing each pass, and one thing only, so that I can really focus in on that one aspect of my craft that I need to check for and fix. I’ve tried going through my manuscript with a handful of highlighters, but invariably when I’m looking for one thing, I miss another, so instead I’m going to make a number of passes and, hopefully, I’ll catch every instance where I need to fix that one thing that I’m looking for. So, what am I looking for?

Show vs. Tell
Dialogue Tags
Emotion
Character Consistency
Pacing

Show and tell is the hardest thing for me to get right. Every book, every scene is usually a blending of the two. Mostly, though, you want to show (see this posting on the subject). When I look for instances where I’m telling instead of showing, I’m looking for those awful adverbs. They’re the biggest clue that I’m doing it wrong.

Hand in hand with showing is emotion. You’ve got to show the emotion, which means going into deeper POV and getting into your character’s gut. Sometimes this can be really hard because it can slow down the pacing of your story. It’s a constant fight to show the emotion and keep the story moving forward.

Pacing, is, of course, another thing I’m looking for in my work. Action scenes need to have those short snappy sentences, fewer dialogue tags, less description. Everything needs to happen faster. When there isn’t the immediacy needed, being sure those five senses are in there, descriptive dialogue tags that clue the reader in to what the speaker is feeling as well as what they’re saying, is so important. But getting that balance just right… it takes effort.

And finally character consistency. Wow, is that a tough one! When a quiet character gets angry, how do they show it? When a boisterous character gets romantic or sad and needs a quiet moment, how can you write it so that it’s believable that this is the same person. We all have so many sides to us, our characters must be the same way. But it needs to be clear that that is what is happening – that your character is simply showing another side of their multi-faceted personality, not that they’re acting like a completely different person. It has to be shown in a way that is believable. So hard!

So what do you look for when you’re editing your work? And do you pull out the highlighters like I do, or do you have another trick for catching these all-important pieces of craft that need to be in your work? Please share!

Grammar Saves Lives, Part Two: Wanton Cruelty to the Comma (1/2)

As promised, today I’ve got a continuation of Nina’s grammar blogs. Today is the horrible, terrifying comma. Take it away, Nina!

Commas save lives.

A magazine once held the headline “Rachel Ray finds solace in cooking her family and her dog.” I don’t know about you, but I’d steer pretty far from this lady.

The common comma is one of the most uncommonly daunting pieces of punctuation out there, and competes with the apostrophe for the punctuation mark most abused and omitted. I will admit, I was so scared that I declared from the outset that I’d do this in two parts.

But have no fear!

Through all of the sources I’ve looked at, there seem to come up only five themes of usage for commas: series, clause separation, parentheticals, modification, and a couple of miscellaneous usages I’m going to stick in a grab bag. See? That’s not so bad. Today we’ll just start out with the first (and longest) two.

Let’s begin with something on the simpler side: the serial comma.

-          Use commas to separate three or more words, phrases, or clauses. This is pretty simple. You see it in the sentence I just said: words, phrases, or clauses. Unless you’re being majorly stylistic, make sure to stick a conjunction at the end (and, or, &c).

Ladies, gentlemen, and variations thereupon, we will begin our presentation now.

In my term I will lower taxes, reduce unemployment, and protect the environment.

The defendant, who was at the scene of the crime, who had strong motive, and who had                 access to the murder weapon, is guilty of homicide.

Ever heard of the Oxford comma? Also known as the Harvard comma, it is one of the most hotly debated issues in punctuation. Yes, there are hot debates about punctuation. The Oxford comma is the last comma in a series, right before the conjunction. Consider this sentence:

                We invited the ladies, FDR and Stalin.

Now, technically this is not only a grammatical sentence, but a correct sentence. (If you were holding a rather interesting soiree.) But unless they take a good second look, I get the feeling that Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Stalin would be a little bit offended. Am I talking about the ladies who are FDR and Stalin? Or did I invite to the ladies and FDR and Stalin? It’s kind of hard to tell – because we’re missing an Oxford comma. Let’s see what happens when we stick it in:

                I invited the ladies, FDR, and Stalin.

Now it’s clear who we’re talking about, and nobody is getting killed for impertinence. As a rule of thumb, you don’t really have to have it in a simple list (ham, eggs and cheese), but the Oxford comma can be pretty useful in disambiguating things.
One other thing to note about listing phrases and clauses. If you have a comma within the phrase you’re listing, it’s always going to be clearer if you replace the serial comma with a serial semicolon.

                The participants of the meeting were Robert, the manager; Sydney, the senior   manager; and Chandilyan, the chairman.

-          Similar to the above but not quite the same, use serial commas when you’re listing adjectives to describe a noun.

                He was a difficult, recalcitrant child.

Make sure when you use these to differentiate between coordinate and non-coordinate adjectives: coordinate ones can be used in no particular order, and need commas, while non-coordinate ones have to be in a particular order without commas.

                He lived in a bright, large house. (coordinate)

                She wore a grey wool shawl. (non-coordinate)

Now, the harder-to-figure-out comma use is with clauses. You can use commas to separate independent clauses, dependent clauses, and introductory clauses. Oh, my.

Let’s straighten this out a bit.

-          Use commas when a sentence begins with an independent clause, has a conjunction, and then ends in an independent clause.

                Don’t push that button, or we’ll all blow up!

A useful note: An independent clause is one that would stand on its own as a simple sentence. “Don’t push that button.” “We’ll all blow up.” A dependent clause doesn’t stand on its own; we’ll see a couple of those in the next use.

-          Use commas when the sentence begins in a dependent clause and ends in an independent clause.

                If you push that button, we’ll all blow up!

See? “If you push that button” doesn’t stand on its own – it’s a dependent clause.

-          DO NOT use a comma when the sentence begins in an independent clause and ends in a dependent clause.

                We’ll all blow up if you push that button!

Don’t have sentences that are made of two dependent clauses. That just doesn’t make sense.

-          When the dependent clause at the beginning is just a word, make sure you use a comma – like with an introductory adverb:

                Meanwhile, she pushed the button.

That wasn’t so painful, was it? Join me in a couple weeks for the compelling comma conclusion!

That’s What Makes It Romance

“Puddlers. “  My husband thinks I should copyright the phrase. It’s what I call his kisses that turn me into a little puddle if Merry. After 20 years of marriage I’ve gotten to know my husband’s kisses pretty well. The are little pecks “hi, I’m home and I’m exhausted.” or “bye, I’m out the door and my mind’s already at work”. And then there are the puddlers where he really takes his time and shows me just how much he loves me (those kisses are one of the ways I knew that I needed to marry the man in the first place – and I don’t mean want, I mean need).

So what does my husband’s kisses have to do with writing? Well, I write romance. What doesn’t it have to do with writing? For some reason modern romance writers think that you need to have sex in a romance novel for it to be considered a real romance. I completely disagree. It needs to have romance. That could be anything from the touch of a couple’s fingers to the most intense baby-making expedition. It could be a look filled with love and understanding to flat-out strip as fast as you can because I absolutely have to touch you now.

But,  I argue (and some science actually backs me up) it the sharing of saliva,  the passing of germs and all that disgusting stuff that goes on in a kiss that really makes you know that this is the right person with whom you want to spend the rest of your life (and I’m not talking about until the divorce). True love,  true romance where each person gives up something of themselves, something of their life, hopes or dreams for the other can only be discovered in a kiss – and it’s got to be a puddler.

So what has it that your hero has given up for your heroine? And what is it that turns you into a little puddle in a romance novel? Is it the actual copulation? Or is it something else which just makes you sign happily and say ‘yeah, that’s why I read romance”?

Nina will be back next week with another grammar post! If there’s a topic you’d like her to tackle, comment below!

Grammar Saves Lives, Part One

As promised last week, here is the first of a series of grammar blog posts by my editor. Last week, I asked for suggestions, and Dana came up with a good one – the difference between n-dashes and m-dashes and when to use which (thank you, Dana!). Thanks to time constraints, she chose this one; that’s ok, she’ll do my topics too, eventually (and some day really soon she’ll finish editing my next book so that I can publish it – right, Nina!?).

     So, without further ado, take it away, Nina! 

(and hyphen)

Today, we’re going to kick off the grammar series with something easy and simple – en-dashes and em-dashes.

(See what I did there?)

Dashes save lives. I mean, which would you rather hear about – the man eating shark at the table to your left, or the man-eating shark right behind you? Think about it.

First off is en-dashes. They’re the really easy one, just a single tap of the “-“ key on your keyboard. (That’s why they’re called “n”, as supposed to “m” – they’re about half the size of em-dashes.) En-dashes are usually used just for technical things.

-  Use the en-dash to replace the word “to” or “through” in intervals, like when you’re talking about a span of years or page numbers. Don’t use it when it’s “from … to …”, though; that’s just getting into over-abbreviation.

President Jimmy Carter (1977-81) won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 (Carter 93-4).

-  Use the en-dash to show a relationship between two things, or to hyphenate separate ideas.

A major achievement in the pre-Civil War era was the Maryland-Illinois route called Cumberland Road, or the “All-American Road”.

-  Use an en-dash the same way you’d use a hyphen –

Put two words together, like above in “All-American” – or like the word “en-dash” itself!
Split a word in half so that it looks bet-

ter justified.
Split up a word into syl-la-bles, or spell it O-U-T.
Modify words, like something spine-tingling. Make sure to use a hyphen when it marks a difference between a verb and an adjective – think back to the man-eating shark. Who’s eating whom?
Connect numbers to their units: a five-foot-five, 125-pound, twenty-year-old woman.
My favorite use of a hyphen is a hanging hyphen, which you use when you have more than one hyphenated word with the same base, like when I talk about en- and em-dashes.

-  Use en-dashes for bullets in a list, like this one!

Then there’s em-dashes. These are the long ones, about the length of the letter “m” in most typefaces. Em-dashes can often replace other punctuation marks, so they’re mainly stylistic.

-  You can use an em-dash to replace an ellipsis (. . .) at the end of dialogue, when someone is cut off. It makes it more abrupt – cut off rather than trailing off – so it’s good for someone stopping short or being interrupted.

“Go away, or I’ll—”

“You’ll what? Kick me out?”

-  You could also use it to replace a colon, a semicolon, or a comma, for a more abrupt end to a sentence.

They didn’t agree then – not then, and not ever again.

-  Use an em-dash to attribute quotes.

Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses. – Dorothy Parker

Now, there’s one use that you may have noticed I left out: parentheticals. Dashes are perhaps most often used to insert offhand ideas – like this – in the middle of a sentence, replacing parentheses. It’s not a hard use to understand; the only reason I left it for last is because you can use both en- and em-dashes for these. This is just a stylistic difference: use an en-dash enclosed in spaces, an em-dash enclosed in spaces, or an em-dash without spaces depending on what you feel looks best. The only thing is to make sure you’re consistent about it!

Now, one more thing to recall – now that you know how to use dashes, it’s going to be hard to resist sprinkling them all over the place! They can be distracting, though, and there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. So, be careful. I swear, half of my job is going through all of Merry’s dashes and replacing them with colons or semicolons or commas. (Not to mention, I used seven em-dashes in this 600-word blog!)

So that’s dashes! Use ’em well, use ’em right. I hope you enjoyed this first installment of the series! Any requests for next time?

 

Too Old To Learn?

Too old to learn?

Does this sound like a strange topic coming from me? I’m a writer and a self-publisher; what do I know about learning — and what does it have to do with this blog?

Well, being a writer, I need to know grammar. Pretty obvious, huh? But when I was in high school, I totally zoned out during grammar lessons. They were delivered in a bored monotone because it wasn’t just the students who were bored by it. We had to diagram sentences and we never put any of the lessons to good, practical use. (Somehow they’ve changed the way grammar is taught in schools – my daughter, a senior in high school, loves grammar, thinks it’s really fun and enjoys learning about it. Yes, the current public school system has finally done something right!)

So what does a writer who doesn’t know grammar do, aside from relying heavily on professional editors? Well, I can tell you, it’s horribly embarrassing giving your work over to a total stranger when it’s filled with incredibly stupid grammar mistakes. So, I had to learn. Now I make some mistakes, but not even half the number I used to (and sometimes I just use bad grammar to sound more colloquial – as in that last sentence, thank you for pointing that out).

“But, wait,” you say, “I’m too old to learn anything new, and certainly not anything as complicated as grammar!”

Bullshit!

Studies have shown that ‘fluid intelligence’, the ability to think logically in novel situations without using prior knowledge — like pattern recognition, working memory, abstract thinking — peaks in one’s twenties. (From “A Sharper Mind, Middle Age and Beyond” by Patricia Cohen, published in the New York Times) But does that mean that you can’t learn anything new? Nope. In fact, ‘crystallized intelligence’, the kind of skill that you get through education — verbal ability, inductive reasoning, judgment, and hard facts — actually gets better as you get older. And brain plasticity, the ability of the brain to make new connections and neural pathways, is pretty much constant throughout your life (from Brain Facts, by the Society for Neuroscience — my daughter’s book, not mine).

So, yes, memorizing a bunch of grammar rules in isolation is going to be a bit harder if you’re an older person. However, if you put those rules into context, show how they make sense, how a sentence sounds when the rules are used incorrectly compared to how it sounds when they’re used the right way, then voilà! You, too, can learn grammar, no matter how old you are.

To prove this, over the next few weeks I have asked my editor, Nina, to go over a few grammar rules which have either stumped me or which I see being broken all the time: commas, run-on sentences and apostrophes. If there are any grammar rules that you have problems with, tell me and we’ll address them too.  If I don’t hear from you then the topics above are the ones we’ll cover — and yes, that’s a threat.

Ready?

Historical Research

I don’t think there could be anything more enjoyable than writing a historical novel. Honestly! Actually, it’s not just writing the novel. Writing the novel isn’t the most fun part (I’m a little embarrassed to admit). It’s the research.

Doing research is definitely the best part of writing historical novels. I’ve got a whole bookshelf filled with books on the Regency. I’ve gone to England and walked the gardens of grand estates and royal parks. I’ve walked through houses which were lived in by the aristocracy of the Regency. It’s amazing to feel the history there.

Buying vegetables in Kolkata

I had a great time doing research in Kolkata when I was gathering information for An Exotic Heir, as well. Travelling around Kolkata, walking through the Victoria Memorial’s museum which gives a wonderfully thorough history of the city. Reading diaries of the English who lived in Calcutta during the Regency period. All that history! And then it struck me, as I accompanied my mother-in-law to the bazaar one morning to buy fish and vegetables, vendors have been hawking their wares in bazaars in exactly the same way for over 250 years! Yes. When you go to buy vegetables, they are frequently laid out on the ground on banana leaves just as they have been for hundreds of years. Sellers still weight the fruits and vegetables using hand-held scales dropping weights on one side to balance the precariously heaped vegetables on the other. There are only two adaptations which I have seen – bare electric light bulbs which are strung up in the evenings (although not all sellers have them, some still sell by candle light) and the cell phone which is tucked away under the seller’s legs because everybody has cell phones in India!

Now, while this is all great fun, finding out how people lived, reading about the political tensions of the day and how different people related to one another (Indians to English to Anglo-Indians, in particular), what do you do with all that information? You can just drop it into your manuscript! Your novel will read like a history

St. Paul's Cathedral, Kolkata

book.

No, it is the saddest part of historical research that you have to sprinkle it in delicately like the hottest chili peppers into a curry. You don’t want to overwhelm the taste of the dish by dumping in a lot of spice – you just want a flavor to add a little zing. So you describe a dress here, a table there, show how people act toward one another – whether it be turning one’s back on someone deemed undesirable (as many of the English did with Anglo-Indians), or welcoming them warmly (as they did at other times in history – isn’t that confusing! You’ve got to pick your decades carefully because the English swung back and forth in their acceptance of the native Indians and the people of mixed-blood).

So, enjoy your research. Let it infuse your writing with color, sounds and smells, but keep the descriptions light because a heavy hand will spoil the dish, er, novel.