You Can’t Handle the Truth

Hello, dear readers. The sun is shining here, which I’m enjoying from inside, settled in my favorite comfy chair. Honestly, I’m pretty exhausted, as I spent Wednesday-Friday at the Public Library Association conference. It was exciting for obvious reasons, like all the advanced reader copies (ARCs) I scored from the publishers who were there.

^{A small sample of what I returned with.}

But there were also some surprise highlights, like members of The Ohio State marching band.

^{No one expects the Spanish Inquisition, or a marching band.}

Point is, you really never know what to expect from Librarians. We’re a pretty crazy bunch. But that’s not all that has been on my mind lately. I’ve also been thinking a lot about Vikings, and now you’re going to be thinking about them, too. (Aside—Can we make Vikings the next Roman Empire? That would be cool.)

So, just as a general rule, I like Viking history. Actually, I like Medieval history overall, and the Vikings played a big part in that. It’s battles for power and thrones (sounds like a good book title), as well as exploration and the totally underappreciated ability of the Norse people to assimilate everywhere from Kievan Rus to France to England. Thanks to the TV shows Vikings and Vikings: Valhalla, I’ve been inspired to delve into the real history of these folks even more with some great nonfiction books, the best of which I think is The Wolf Age by Tore Skeie, translated by Alison McCullough.

But I recently read another excellent book about the real life of a central character on Vikings: Valhalla, Harald Hardrada, The Last Viking by Don Hollway. I enjoyed the book a great deal, and it got me thinking about what the plan might be for the upcoming third and final season of V:V. Given the arcs that have been set up, there might very well be some shifts in power, (spoiler, King Canute currently reigns over the North Sea Empire), but to whom power might shift and how far into history the show will go, is hard to say with only a limited number of episodes left. But the storyline I’m most interested in (and frightened to see) is what they plan to do with Harald as he reaches the Byzantine Empire.

^{Mmm. Hello Harald, aka actor Leo Suter.}

As I said, given the dramatic arcs the show has been building, I feel like they are heading toward Harald’s attempts to claim the thrones of Norway, Denmark, and England, but I’m not sure how the writers would plan to approach that, because of the blending and compression of time, particularly the fact that in real life, Harald was a generation younger than the other main characters, like Canute, Olaf, and Leif. Anyhow, Season 2 left him on the road to Constantinople, where in real life, he spent about a decade. And what did he do there? Well, that’s the truth I think the show won’t dare show.

According to Hollway, Harald was very close to two Byzantine Empresses—Zoe and Maria. How close? With Zoe, almost certainly very close, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. And with Maria, if not physical, the closeness was real and intense emotionally, but also possibly in that other way. Why do I think the show will shy away from this? I mean, having your hero bang a couple of empresses is exactly the sort of thing a Netflix show ought to go for. And you know what, they might go there, but I’m willing to bet a million dollars that I do not possess that, if they do, an important fact will be left out.

They were both old enough to be his mother.

Actually, Zoe was nearly old enough to be his grandmother.

Because, apparently, Harald liked cougar hunting, if you will forgive the metaphor. Which, honestly, just makes me like him all the more. Not simply because I am a middle-aged woman who likes when the world acknowledges that women this age might still be desirable, but because I love the idea of Harald being attracted to women of experience and power. And think of the character arc—he goes from banging the skinny young thing in the pilot to having years long relationships with women of a certain age.

I would so be here for Harald’s appreciation of mature women, but the show already started to destroy his character in Season 2, and I’m not holding my breath they will fix the problem in Season 3. As I mentioned at the time, the show took Harald from being a clever man who could talk anyone into anything in Season 1, to being an incompetent himbo in Season 2. And as I’ve learned from the Hollway book, the Season 1 portrayal is much more accurate. Harald was incredibly wily, as well as a poet, a trait much admired by the Norse people. In fact, for folks who watched the original Vikings series, remember how in Season 3 Ragnar sneaks into Paris by pretending to have died and hiding in his own coffin? Harald pulled that trick for real to capture a city, because he was just that cunning.

The real Harald is an utterly fascinating guy, and that should be enough for me. There are books and the true history to delve into. But I can’t help being irrationally annoyed that V:V has made him less interesting already, and will likely make him even less awesome in the final season. Apparently, the writers just can’t handle the truth*.

~S

*Yes. I appreciate that history in this era can be hard to pin down, so some of Hollway’s book is the historian’s best guess. But tell me his guess wouldn’t make awesome TV drama, and I’ll call you a liar. Point is, when this version of Harald is an option, I don’t understand opting for something less compelling.

Real-ish

^{Got to love a good classic commercial.}

Greetings from the first ever UniWriMo, in which J and I create our own NaNo and CampNaNo WriMo experiences. Four days in, I think all is going well. Once a friend helped me remember a basic Excel formula to keep a running total of numbers entered in a column, we have a functional word count tracker. We’ve also gotten a lot of important proofreading done, and J has put quite a dent in the latest Vendi nautical fantasy adventure book. All in all, I think the first UniWriMo should be a success.

Also since last we spoke, as it were, the Reign of the Eagle bundle hit virtual shelves. If you would like a complete fantasy series of 6 books and over 600K words, that dream can now be yours. Find your favorite ebook retailer here and grab yourself a copy. Feel free to gift one to a friend while you are there.

Other than these two developments, which, honestly, are more than enough for your average week, I’m also excited because J helped me crack a long running problem I’ve been having. This is a delightfully common occurrence, as J is the cleverest, most helpful coauthor and spouse anyone has ever had. The advice related to a project I’ve been unsuccessfully working on since (checks notes) 2016. It looks like the earliest mention here on the blog was February 2017, and it’s a project we generally refer to as the Mercenary ‘Verse.

As a refresher, I’ve been trying to write a series of Historical M/M Romance novels about the members of a mercenary company in Renaissance Italy. But every attempt has failed, primarily because the historical detail overwhelms me. Good historical fiction really immerses you in the time period, and it gets shit right, if I may be blunt. But I couldn’t get the time period right in the draft chapters I wrote or in any of the many, many outlines I’ve tried. I love the characters and the idea, and I didn’t want to abandon the project, hence I’ve been periodically returning to it for 8 years now. However, I was afraid I would always be defeated by the Historical part of my Historical Romance.

Then one day recently I was chatting with J about the dearth of really good Historical M/M Romance. (I mean, I can only reread KJ Charles so many times.) He then said I should write some myself, maybe find inspiration in all the Ancient Roman nonfiction I’ve been reading lately. I reminded him of the Mercenary ‘Verse and how difficult historical research has been for me. And then he pointed out I could just write something in a Renaissance-inspired world that doesn’t have to be the actual Renaissance.

I immediately saw how right he was. For instance, I love CS Pacat’s Captive Prince series, which is set in a historical-ish but completely created secondary world. Or there’s Guy Gavriel Kay’s historical inspired worlds in books like The Lion of Al-Rassan and A Brightness Long Ago. Why couldn’t I just file the serial numbers off the Renaissance, as it were, and call it Fantasy Romance? I love the characters I’ve created for the Mercenary ‘Verse and the general aesthetic. Why skip writing books with those elements because I’m paralyzed by research nerves?

So, as soon as we get through this UniWriMo with the next Myrcia book under our belts and our vampire retelling done, I’m heading back to what will now be my quasi-Renaissance world to write the Historical(ish) M/M Romance I want and I think the world deserves.

~S

Packing Up

^{Research mode: ACTIVATED. Thank you public libraries.}

April 1 and the start of Camp NaNoWriMo arrives at the end of the week, and I’m getting packed and ready for an adventure. Or, you know, looking ahead at our calendar and figuring out what I need to get done this week so I can, hopefully, be productive in April. Here’s the agenda.

Old Habits Die Hard

Last night I finished my first pass of this novel, which J wrote a while back. Now, I may be biased, but I think it’s pretty good. I made a few tweaks here and there, and as I mentioned not long ago, I made some notes about larger changes I want to make. That means my next step is to go back through those notes and make those changes, hopefully, before April 1, since doing the final proof is a joint project for J and I in April. If I can’t quite finish my revisions by Saturday, though, we have a little wiggle room on proofing. The sale date we’re aiming for is June 28, which means we don’t have to be ready to upload to Draft2Digital until mid or late May. I think we won’t have trouble making that.

Timothy Woolrich short story

As long-time readers know, we always put out short stories to introduce characters in the next book in our series. We’ve already sent out the first of these for Old Habits Die Hard, a story featuring Morwen Byrne called “All That Lasts.” Another POV character in OHDH, and unlike Morwen, one you’ve never met, is Timothy Woolrich, the valet to one of the nastiest characters in the Myrcia ‘verse. J and I have discussed what we want his short story to be about, so all that’s left for me to do during Camp NaNo is to actually write it. Email subscribers should look for that story May 15.

Red Sand Girl

Our next standalone novel is called Red Sand Girl and features Pallavi Ratnam, a hillichmagnar (aka sorceress, aka Srota) who readers have met in such novels as The Last Bright Angel. The current plan is to release it at the end of July, which means it needs proofed and uploaded to Draft2Digital in June. Since I haven’t read this book since J wrote it several years ago, and we now have to be extra careful that our older books don’t contradict the books we’ve published, I need to give this a pass, and what better time than during Camp?

Mercenary romances

And if there’s any time left over, I might putter around with outlining the historical romance series I want to write in the fall. There’s a lot of prep work to do, from outlining to character profiles to research, and I’d love to have as much of that pre-writing done before my calendar opens up and I have time to start writing. Getting to this in April might be a bit optimistic, but hey, you never know how other things are going to pan out.

So that’s the plan. I just need to finish packing.

~S

Starting Over

^{Character and plot dry erase boards are in place. Along with notes and a favorite writing book.}

Without digging back through this blog, I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ve long been toying with the idea of writing a series of M/M romance novels set in Renaissance Italy. (Yes, I could go search the blog, but it’s quicker to say I’m not going to, right?) Looking ahead at our release schedule for the awesome Myrcia content you are all here for, I see that I’m not going to be quite as busy at the end of this year as I often am. (Don’t worry—this doesn’t mean less new Myrcia content for you, dear readers. It just means I’m not going to have to spend as much time getting stuff ready for publication.) So, what if I returned to this historical romance idea?

There are a couple of challenges to writing this series. When I worked on it before, I loved the setting (times and places don’t come much cooler than Renaissance Italy if you ask me), and I think the characters are really interesting. However, the plots just all need scrapped and entirely new stories constructed. To that end, last night J and I busted out our favorite romance outlining tool, Gwen Hayes’s Romancing the Beat. We started by specifically stating some important things about the lovers of the first book, including what’s their Hole in the Heart. At its most basic level, a good romance is about two people who make each other better. They each have the power to fix the Hole in the Heart of the other character, and the story is the journey of the two of them figuring out how to make that happen.

So, we identified the Hole in the Heart of each lover, which meant it was time to plot the journey. J and I have a rough outline of Act 1, aka about the first 25% or so of the novel. It’s quite vague at this point, with notes like, “Nikolas is sad,” and “Alfonso is bored.” But every single detail doesn’t need to be in the outline at this point. Think of it like building a house—you do all the framing before you hang the drywall and start painting the living room.

This also leads me to the other challenge of writing this series—research. A big part of why I failed with this the first time around was that, while I’d done some research into Renaissance Italy, I hadn’t done nearly enough. I’d thought I could just write my romance, and then add cute little historical touches later. But the fact is, how the characters behave, where they go, what they think is all driven by the time and place, and I simply didn’t know it well enough. I love reading Renaissance histories, so my intention is to really steep myself in them for the next few months so I already have details at hand. And also, knowing more about the setting will allow me to fill in the outline. Hence, we’re just going to focus on framing for now. I’ll decorate the rooms later with research.

At least that’s the plan at the moment. We’ll see how it pans out.

~S

Teasing the Inevitable

Gosh, I hope it works out for these two crazy kids.

Tonight is the Oscars.  S and I are going to an Oscar party, though that’s mainly just for the fun of going to a party.  As far as the nominees are concerned, as my dad always likes to say, you can’t begin to plumb the depths of my indifference.  I was just looking at the official site, and in pretty much every category, it’s just movie after movie that I’ve never seen.  We got A Man Called Ove from the library.  And we watched about the first half-hour or so of Captain Fantastic.  And I saw Zootopia on Netflix.  But other than that, I’ve seen nothing.

The truth is that S and I spend a lot more time reading and watching TV anymore than we do watching movies.  Especially movies in the theater.  It’s been a very long time since we’ve gone out for a movie, in fact.  But that’s okay, because there’s so much good TV and so many good books.

Speaking of which, we just got the DVDs of Victoria with Jenna Coleman from the library, and we stayed up a bit later than we should have last night watching the first five episodes.  That took us from Victoria’s accession to her marriage to Albert.  It’s very good, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we finish it today.

At the same time, we’re reading Ethan Frome for S’s classic lit book club.  I’ve read it before, years ago, but S hasn’t.  Thanks to a technical glitch in the Google Books version that she’s been reading, she ended up accidentally skipping the introduction.  (For those of you who have read the book, that’s the frame story, where the narrator meets Ethan Frome and ends up having to stay at his house in a snowstorm.)  So we dug out her tablet and I read it to her while she drove.  And of course it changes the story quite a bit when you start out knowing, even from Ethan’s first appearance in the book, that something awful is going to happen to him.  The question becomes, “How did this happen?”

That’s the same issue faced with historical fiction, like Victoria.  No one with even the slightest knowledge of history has any doubt how things are going to work out between Victoria and Albert.  The facts are well known, and there’s not really any way to create suspense there.

The trick, in both cases, seems to be a focus on the characters.  Both Edith Wharton and the writers of Victoria seem to be concentrating not on trying to create false suspense where suspense is impossible, but rather giving us marvelous and telling little bits of character development.  In other words, rather than focusing on the outcome (What will happen to Ethan Frome?  Who will Victoria marry?), we focus on the internal qualities of the characters—the flaws and strengths that will lead them to this outcome that we already know.

Here, for example, is the third paragraph of the main narrative of Ethan Frome:

The night was perfectly still, and the air so dry and pure that it gave little sensation of cold. The effect produced on Frome was rather of a complete absence of atmosphere, as though nothing less tenuous than ether intervened between the white earth under his feet and the metallic dome overhead. “It’s like being in an exhausted receiver,” he thought. Four or five years earlier he had taken a year’s course at a technological college at Worcester, and dabbled in the laboratory with a friendly professor of physics; and the images supplied by that experience still cropped up, at unexpected moments, through the totally different associations of thought in which he had since been living. His father’s death, and the misfortunes following it, had put a premature end to Ethan’s studies; but though they had not gone far enough to be of much practical use they had fed his fancy and made him aware of huge cloudy meanings behind the daily face of things.

Even before we know why this much younger, healthier Ethan has walked into Starkfield, we know something vitally important about him—he’s a frustrated scholar unhappy with his lot in life.  Similarly, there’s a fantastic scene in episode 5 of Victoria, where Albert’s libertine older brother, Ernest, takes him to a brothel to “educate” him before his marriage.  Albert goes off with one of the prostitutes, but rather than sleep with her, he just talks to her and takes notes on what he should do on his wedding night.  It really explains a lot about the character, and about the kind of relationship we (as viewers who know our history) know we’ll be seeing later on between the queen and her beloved prince consort.

As a writer, I suppose the lesson here is to remember that “how” and “why” are sometimes more important than “what” happened.  If you create interest in your characters, you can make the reader want to keep reading, even when there’s no suspense as to how things are going to end up.

J

I’ll Fix It in Post

“Fix it in post.” The most dreaded words on set?

Often when J and I are writing, we will borrow from the world of film the idea that we can fix what’s wrong in “post.” Of course, this is just our silly way of referring to revision, but I thought about the idea, and the trope, more seriously when I was working on my ill-fated NaNo novel. Granted, unlike a film, a novelist can always go back and “reshoot” (rewrite) a scene to get what she needs, but I think there’s something to be said for having the raw materials you need before you get to the revision process.

Now, I’ve never made an exact study of the numbers and percentages, but let’s say in a novel that has been properly outlined and researched ahead of time and is drafted thoughtfully, it will have 10-20% changed significantly in revision. When I start a novel knowing that eventuality is coming, that is something I can live with at this point, because I’ve written enough to appreciate that writing is rewriting. But then on a novel like The Queen’s Tower, my NaNo book from two years ago, I went in with a tenuous outline and characters I didn’t know especially well. I finished the first draft of that knowing I would be changing around 20-30% of what had been written, plus adding about 30% entirely new content. That’s pretty daunting, and probably why I still haven’t finished the novel.

And that brings us to this year’s NaNo novel, The Swift True Road. Not only did I not start with the level of detail to my outline I prefer, but I didn’t do as much character work as I would have liked, and being my first historical novel, I quickly realized I hadn’t done even close to enough research. Because it was NaNo, I kept plowing along, but around 35,000 words in, I realized I would be completely reworking at least 50% of what I had already written. Knowing I would be chucking half of what I was laboring so hard to write became discouraging to the point that I didn’t have the heart to continue writing the novel. It also seemed to be a supreme waste of time.

As J pointed out last week, I decided to set The Swift True Road aside, and I went to work on other projects to see me through the month of November, and make certain I still wrote 50,000 words for the month. At some point, I absolutely intend to return to The Swift True Road. I still think it’s a great idea for a book, a romance between two mercenaries in Renaissance Italy, but I’m not going to pick it back up again until I’m sure I can successfully draft a novel that will leave me with the pieces I need to polish a good story in post.

~S

Are You Ready to Rumble?

 

Tapestry of the Battle of Pavia by Bernard van Orley

NaNoWriMo is just a little over a week away, and I’m still furiously trying to get ready. I’ve filled out the basic character sheet J and I have been refining over the years for my most important characters, and I have a basic outline. Now I’m trying to add more detail on the outline, because I well know every minute I spend now will save me very many minutes in November. The one bit of preparation I’m nowhere close to having complete, though, is my research. And I think now is the moment I go ahead and explain here just what it is I’m doing this year.

I’m writing historical erotica, the primary pairing being two men. They are mercenaries in Renaissance Italy, and while they both have relationships with women (and in one case with another man) during the novel, they are what the kids call “endgame.”  Thing is, I’ve never written a historical novel or erotica (fanfic isn’t quite the same), so I’ve been spending the last couple of months finding out all I can about both. Here are my finds.

Erotica

So, when I told folks I was planning a Male/Male Erotica for NaNo, several people excitedly told me that was a brilliant idea. M/M stories are one of the fastest growing segments of the Romance industry, and when it comes to adult fiction, Romance is the industry. Now, back in the day when J and I decided to start writing fantasy novels, I had read almost no fantasy, so that became Job 1 for me. Therefore, I went in search of published smut. (Smut, by the way, is always a term of affection when I’m talking about fiction.)

As I have been toying with the idea of writing erotica for a while, I first tried several months ago to listen to some racy romance novels, picking from what I could get from the library in digital audiobook. I started a couple modern romances, and didn’t make it more than a half hour into any of them. I clearly wasn’t doing well on my own, so I did what any librarian would do—I found recommendations on tumblr.

I started with Courtney Milan’s The Duchess War, an excellent heterosexual romance with some naughty bits, but I really wanted to see what was being written for M/M pairings. The next novel I read was Bound with Honor, a book recommended by a fanfic author I hugely admire. This book features lots of groupings of the two male and two female leads, but it left me still wanting something both historical, as these two books are, but strictly M/M.

And, if I can sound like a dirty old lady, smuttier. In a panic, I started listening to a book that was definitely smuttier, every bit as dirty as the best fanfic I’ve read, but it was M/M/F, modern, and horribly written. So my search continues for the perfect M/M historical erotica. I have several in my to be read pile, and I’ve started one called False Colors, which so far is well written, historical, and M/M, but I haven’t hit the smut yet. Fingers crossed.

Renaissance

I’ve had much better luck doing my historical research. Michael Mallett’s book Mercenaries and Their Masters is a godsend. I also listened to all of Will Durant’s The Renaissance from his The Story of Civilization series. In addition to these, I have a whole basket full of books on the era, which have proven invaluable. I wish I had time to read them all cover to cover, instead of just dipping into them. Also, Ohio libraries are amazing, and the only way my research has been possible. May they remain ever thus.

Outline

So now I outline and hope that what I put on it spurs me to ask the right historical questions before November starts. If not, I suppose historical detail is something I can add on revision. But I really want the time and place to help drive the story, so hopefully I’ll know what I’m doing well enough come November 1.

~S