The book is smokin’

I love the rush of when a new scene starts to sparkle. The razor-sharp dialogue, the witty banter…and the book starts to take a life of its own. I hit a screeching road block at the first turning point and it was time for the conflict to escalate. I found the perfect means, and now I’m rubbing my hands together with glee, just watching my characters try to worm their way out of this one. Fun, fun.

I’m still juggling the responsibilities of teaching, motherhood, and the terrible TV addiction to shows like 24, American Idol, and Lost. Can’t wait for the summer when I can crank out more pages.

Anyway, it’s in the rough sketchy stage now, where the pages just bleed out. I’ll have a bit of clean-up to do, fine-tuning and so on, but it’ll get there.

Got a rejection from HQN the other day. That’s okay. I still believe very strongly in this book. It’ll find a home and an editor who loves it.

Today’s trivia: Women in the nineteenth century often took arsenic in varied quantities because it made their faces a delicate, pale porcelain color. This was, for whatever reason, considered attractive. Now that’s an extreme makeover!

Happy, Happy Birthday Baby

It’s my baby girl’s first birthday today. I can’t believe she’s one. The time has really flown. Of course, a baby photo is required to mark the occasion. Here we go:

The real reason for my excitement is that we get to flip the car seat around, AND no more formula! I swear, the rule of no milk until age one, must have been created by Enfamil and Similac. But it’s whole milk for us! Saving lots of money, money, money! Yippee!

For today’s history trivia, here’s the history of the birthday cake:

Some say the Greeks used to take cakes to the temple of the Goddess of the moon, Artemis. They took round cakes to represent the full moon. Another view is that the tradition of the birthday cake started in Germany. A bread was made in the shape of baby Jesus’ swaddling clothes. Geburtstagorten is another type of German cake that has been used for birthday. Hundreds of years ago it was customary to add small surprises to birthday cakes. When the guests received a slice, the different items were used to predict the future. Coins meant great wealth, a thimble meant you’d never marry.

**Can you imagine how ticked off a guest might have been if they got a thimble in their slice?

Sagging Middles

Many writers complain about the sagging middles of their novels. I’m no different. Once I get past page 100, a vast desert of 200 pages awaits me. Somehow I have to get the hero and heroine from hating each other (or at least having some sort of conflict between them) to being in love. It’s so hard to get this right!

One of the things I’m doing right now is delving into the research to try and come up with fun and unique ideas for scenes. My heroine loves to cook, and since she’s been taken out of the middle class and plopped into the wealthy class, she’s at a loss (now that there’s someone else to do the cooking). She’s being rebellious, however.

Since I’ve been focusing some of the research on cooking, and in the meantime I’m trying out the South Beach Diet to shed those pesky five pounds, courtesy of my infant daughter that will NOT go away….I’m going to continue the research trivia based on food.

Here’s what the Victorians had to say about choice of diet:

“Occupation affects our choice of diet. Persons engaged in sedentary occupations cannot digest as much nor as easily as those who labor out of doors. They should have food that gives the greatest amount of nourishment in the smallest compass, and it should be served in the most digestible form. Those who tax their brains severely should have animal food and the most digestible forms of starchy and warmth-giving foods.”

Animal food? Sounds like we writers should be eating Kibbles N’ Bits instead of cheeseburgers.

Victorian recipes

All right, here we go:

From The Boston Cook Book, 1884 by Mrs. D. A. Lincoln

Pound Cake by Miss Ward
1 pound butter
1 pound sugar
10 eggs
1 pound flour
1/2 wineglass wine
1/2 wineglass brandy

Cream the butter; add the sugar, yolks of the eggs, wine, brandy, whites of the eggs, and the flour. Put currants into one fourth of the dough and almonds, blanched and pounded in rose water, into another part. Leave the remainder plain. Fill very small round tins three quarters full. Into half of those containing the plain dough put small pieces of citron, three in each, inserting the citron upright a little way into the dough. Sift sugar over the tops of those containing the citron and almond before putting them into the oven. Bake twenty minutes. Frost the plain and currant cakes. Pound cake is lighter when baked in small cakes than in loaves.
**Notes from Michelle:
Notice how she didn’t have an oven temperature?? I imagine it must have been very hard to cook without any way of knowing how hot the oven would be. Also, half the ingredients were in the directions and not the initial list of ingredients. What is citron? Candied lemon?? And rose water? I’m guessing she was making the equivalent of almond extract.
(more…)

Homebaked Research

One of my favorite reference books is a reprint of an 1885 Cooking School book. I love reading old cookbooks. To me, it’s a way of seeing into the past lives of women. Nowadays, women want quick and easy dinners that can be prepared in 30 minutes or less. Back then, cooking was much more complicated.

There is an entire section devoted to selecting meat from the butcher. She describes each portion of the cow and which part is good for steak, for stews, etc. and particularly how to know if the meat is fresh or not. Nowadays, since our meat is sealed up with an expiration date, we don’t have to worry about it. But in order to have their beef, Victorian women had to practically be surgeons. The author describes the muscles of the cow, and how to trim around certain bones. It’s amazing. Apparently, if you press your finger into the meat and your thumbprint remains, it’s not fresh.

In terms of recipes, some of the measuring implements are interesting, too. She describes using one salt spoon full of marjoram, thyme, etc. I’ve seen a salt spoon before, in an antique silver set. I’m guessing it’s about half a teaspoon or somewhere in that neighborhood.

Are there any types of recipes you all would be interested in seeing?

The Joy of Writing

Tonight I pulled a Margery. Margery has a great attitude about writing, that it should be fun and you should enjoy it. I realized I was beating myself into frustration-mode, trying so hard to pull pages out of bleeding fingernails on the keyboard. And everything I wrote was just WRONG.

So I decided to pull a Margery and write for myself. I dragged out an old historical and amused myself with it, tweaking the first three chapters. It wasn’t half bad, really. But more importantly, I was having fun. I realized that, even though it’s important to be disciplined, your creativity can’t be beaten down and shoved into a box. All you end up with are useless pages. By the same token, you can’t just write whenever the spirit moves you :bath:, or you’ll never end up with a book. I think it takes balance. And I’ll bet tomorrow, my creative muse will be back in action, after the mental break.

Your daily historical trivia: Victorian women’s ideas of parlor amusements weren’t what we might consider typical entertainment. Instead of playing cards or games, they did science experiments. Really. This is an excerpt from Godey’s Ladies Book, 1855:

“Violet-colored metal: Melt together equal parts of copper and antimony, the one a yellow, the other a white metal and the color that results from this mixture will take the color of a violet. ”

And just where did they keep random bits of copper and antimony, I’d like to know!

Baby Boot Camp

Last night, Baby and I had our first serious mother-daughter fight. The ChildWhoDoesNotSleep ™ decided that waking up at 1:30 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. for a bottle would be her new habit. I don’t think so. When she’s sick, that’s one thing. When she’s trying to rule the household, that’s another. So she got water in her bottle last night. This was her reaction: After approximately 1 hour of screaming, complaining, and being given water, she finally succumbed to a sulky sleep. Ha! I won.

And she did too, judging from the lack of sleep I got. Oh well, such is Baby Boot Camp. I’m big on training my kids to go to bed early and to get up early (of course I pay for this on the weekend). But I like having them both in bed at 7 p.m. so I can have some quality time with my husband. We have a pattern in our household, and it works for us.

This is what I need to do in my writing. My pattern is a bit off at the moment and I need to ensure that I write at the same time every day. Wasn’t there someone who said you have to do something 19 times in a row (or something like that) in order to form a habit? God help me if that’s how long it takes my daughter to sleep through the night. I think I’m really a morning person and I do so much better if I have my daily quota finished first thing. It brightens my day, knowing that I have X number of pages behind me. Maybe I need to stop blog-hopping in the morning and do my writing then. Hmmm…something to ponder.

What time of day is best for your writing?

Today’s trivia: In medieval times, cobwebs were used to staunch the bleeding in many wounds. The sticky quality of the spider webs would help the blood flow stop.

Wine, anyone?

I love a good glass of white wine. The problem is, I haven’t found enough types of wine that I like. I hate the really dry wines, but I don’t want them as sweet as Kool-Aid either. When I went to Italy with my husband, we had some WONDERFUL house wines, but I didn’t have a clue what I was drinking. They just came with the meal.

So, I’d love to know, what’s your favorite white wine? Doesn’t have to be a brand name, but is there a particular kind like Riesling, Chardonnay? I want to try some new things. Recommendations would be great!

Another historical tidbit for you: In medieval Ireland, it was rare for a man or woman to marry only once. Divorce was common, and either side could back out of a marriage for various reasons (including impotence!). Even priests could marry. It was only after the 12th century when the Anglo-Normans invaded that matters began to change.

Self Discipline

My husband and I were watching 24 last night, and it’s become one of those shows where the fresh twists are now becoming stale. People get killed all the time, in fact, more often than they live. Then, the people who are too stupid to live end up getting away. Go figure. It made me think of plot twists in romance novels. Editors are always saying they want fresh new twists on old themes. But even when I get a great idea for a twist, sometimes the book starts shifting back to the familiar patterns and I wonder if it’s lost its freshness. Maybe we should have plot expiration dates…Best if used by April 30th.

My new book has hit the sagging middle with a resounding thump. This is good and bad. It’s good because I’m still making forward progress, but it’s bad because I’m starting to become more aware of my shortcomings as an author. I tend to layer as I go, writing rough copy, then going back and smoothing it, then making sure I show emotion in the scene. Last night I had a sudden realization that one of my subplot characters had no depth. If I flesh him out, that will help make the scene sparkle. I like moments like these, when you recognize your own flaws and know ways to help fix the problems.

Now, I just need the self-discipline to plant my butt in the chair and crank out more pages!

And, continuing with our Celtic theme this week–
The historical trivia of the day:
Ancient Celtic warriors did not wear clothing when going into battle. In 255 BC, the Celtic military elite were described as “finely built men.” Women, too, were feared in battle.
Let your imagination do the rest…

Blog Identity

Yesterday I was reading Booksquare and there was an excellent article on your blog identity. It got me to thinking . . . hmmm…exactly where do I fit in this? I’m in a nebulous world of aspiring authordom where I don’t have books out yet (emphasis on YET–I will somehow sneak my way past the editors), and I know most people don’t particularly want to read about my darling adorable-yet-often-evil children. I write historicals, but I truly don’t think people want to read huge passages on historical research.

So yesterday while I was meticulously avoiding the train wreck happening at Romancing the Blog (quick side note on that in a minute)…I started to think about what I’d like to do with my blog. I think I’m going to post random, fun bits of historical trivia. And that will be my blog identity. Useless knowledge for all!

Side note on Romancing the Blog–I have a sneaking suspicion that the people who were arguing and attacking so vehemently yesterday are the same ones who are afraid that this knowledge about web design will somehow hurt their businesses. Knowledge=power. I’ll tell you one thing, though. Operating a website is not expensive. Maintaining your privacy is not expensive. (Everything you see is stuff I’ve done by myself. I have no degree in computers and very little training, but I’ve figured out what I can–so can you, if you have the time.). When you want to link to your books through Amazon or Barnes and Noble, it should be your choice whether you want your web designer to get the small percentage of affiliate profits or whether you get them. That’s my opinion, and I’m sticking to it. :coffee2:

Now, for your random trivia of the day: In ancient Celtic times, there was a marriage tradition where the bride and groom would wash the feet of the arriving guests. A silver coin was placed in a basin of water and after the marriage ceremony, the unmarried women could compete to get the coin. Whoever got the coin would be the next to marry.