Margaret Mitchell’s Long Shadow

I didn’t mean to write an American Civil War romance. Indeed, I didn’t mean to write a historical romance at all. My first book was a contemporary and so was my third. If I had sat down and decided to write something historical, surely I would have chosen another period, a more commercially-viable one, than I did. A nice Regency involving a brooding duke perhaps. (And for the record, I love a good Regency with a brooding duke as much as the next girl. In fact, probably more than the next girl.)

But writing Brave in Heart (which will be out in 2.5 weeks, if I hadn’t mentioned it lately) just sort of happened. I wanted to write a novella to experiment with different plotting, but the subject unfurled without consulting me. The first 20,000 words appeared very quickly — honestly, I could really use that sort of inspiration with the two creative writing projects sitting on my harddrive now, not to mention my still-unfinished dissertation — though the second half was more of a march. It was only when I had finished that I realize what I had done, which was to enter a very specific subgenre and one that has an almost inescapable Ur-text.

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A Fine Romance Friday: Four Weddings and a Funeral

It’s raining here. Like epically raining. While part me just wants to re-recommend Monsoon Wedding and call it a day, I can’t ignore that precipitation brings us many good romances, including today’s selection: Mike Newell’s Four Weddings and a Funeral.

As the title explains, it’s a film about a series of big gatherings and the emotions and complications they bring. At the first wedding, a confirmed British bachelor (Hugh Grant) meets an American girl (Andie MacDowell). After a series of hilarious interactions, they spend the night together…and then she goes back to America. When they meet again, at the second wedding, she’s engaged to somebody else.

The film introduces a host of tropes that would go on to become cliches — the cast of kooky friends, the big event gone bad, the highly structured narrative — but here, they’re fresh. I think it’s the unabashed emotion of Four Weddings, a movie that never fails to make me cry and to read Auden, that makes it work, that makes it seem original even on the twelfth viewing.

Hugh Grant had quite a run there with romantic comedies in the 90s and 00s, but this might very well be my favorite. (Or should I say, favourite?) He’s adorably awkward. And Andie MacDowell is smart and warm — you want to be friends with her, which is what sets the 80s and 90s romantic comedies apart from those of the present. So if somehow, you’ve avoided it, or haven’t seen it in a while, my recommendation for tonight’s fine romance is Four Weddings and a Funeral, perhaps paired with something hot and rum-y.

The Call 2.0

Unlike the first call story, this one ends with an actual phone call. But it started on Twitter.

At the beginning of April, Carina Press held a pitch event. The promise was that you’d hear within two months and if it was rejection, you’d received personalized feedback. I had just signed a contract with Crimson to publish Brave in Heart, but I was working through a contemporary manuscript with my critique partner, The Easy Part.

It’s a book that I love, but one I was convinced I would never be able to sell because it’s set between staffers in Washington, DC. It’s political, and it’s wonky, and there’s an Alzheimer’s subplot. I had already sent it to one publisher (name redacted), from whom I received the dreaded, “I like your writing, but…” rejection. That editor objected to the partisanship implicit in the premise. I was convinced if I wanted The Easy Part to see the light of day, I would have to self-publish it. So I pitched in #carinapitch mostly because I wanted a second opinion — I wanted to know if the book had a shot with a traditional publisher.

Also, among the epublishers, Carina was my first choice. I have loved all the Carina books I’ve read. Plus, I think Carina is just plain smart and savvy about today’s book market. For a manuscript like The Easy Part, which is very youthful and contemporary, it seemed like a good fit. But even with my hopes, I never anticipated that they’d make an offer.

My pitch was: “Millie — a shy labor organizer – is having a bad year; Parker – an arrogant congressional aide — is having an existential crisis. Together they’ll discover that compared to love, politics is easy.” And a few minutes after putting it on Twitter, I had a request for a full manuscript.

But then, the waiting began.

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Land Where Our Fathers Died

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The day was hot; summer announcing itself. There’s a smell in the south — warm earth and wilting verdure — that I forget every fall and rediscover in the late spring: the smell of summer. The breeze stirring my hair didn’t cool me, though it moved the wheat in which I stood. From the top of the hill, looking down over the field, I tried to imagine the scene 150 years earlier when the Battle of Chancellorsville raged.

I stood at the spot where Robert Lee’s Confederate troops flanked Joseph Hooker’s Federal forces. Among the Federal troops at Chancellorsville was the Connecticut Fifth, the unit to which the hero in my forthcoming novel, Brave in Heart, belongs. Without spoiling the book, the battle is significant to the story I’m telling. I’ve looked at engravings. Read survivors’ accounts. But I needed to see it for myself.

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A Fine Romance Friday: Serendipity

I have a weird thing about place, season, and the things I read/watch. Sometimes when it’s Christmas, you just have to watch a holiday movie, sure. But for the bulk of December, I need Lawrence of Arabia. And Top Gun. And other movies involving hot weather and sand. Sure, I read A Moveable Feast on a Parisian vacation, but also le Carre and Hurston. And the right choice for today — when it’s 90 with 90% humidity and loads of golden sunshine — is, I think, a romantic comedy that starts during the holiday shopping rush. I’m speaking of course of one of the only good Hollywood romantic comedies of the past fifteen years, Serendipity.

After the ultimate meet cute, John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale share a lovely New York evening. They’re both involved with other people, but … but nothing. Refusing to give him her number or her name, Beckinsale sends a book out into the cosmic void with her contact info and calls it a night. Years later, they’ve both moved on. Until Cusack finds the book.

Now, I have issues with the film’s misreading of Love in the Time of Cholera (see my Goodreads review here), but it’s impossible to have issues with John Cusack. John Cusack in all the movies, I say. Even Kate Beckinsale manages to be charming, and she gives us access to John Corbett doing a Yanni impression and Molly Shannon being hilarious. It’s all sweet, lovely, and serendipitous. And if you need an anecdote to summer, I commend it to you tonight.

Politics and the Romance Novel

Go ahead and get a cup of tea, this might go on for a while.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the literary marketplace as a fiction writer and literary scholar, pondering questions like, does the buying and selling of art for money detract from aesthetics? What pressures does the marketplace put on writers? What types of fiction (in terms of form and content) will perform well on the market? Are literary gatekeepers (e.g., editors, publishers, marketing people, critics, agents, etc.) correct in their assessments about marketability? And so on.

One of the determinations and often-repeated truisms is that readers don’t like political books. (ETA: it’s two years since I wrote this, but this post at AAR is an excellent example of someone complaining about authors “adding” politics to romance novels.) Many believe readers won’t read about politics and, more broadly, they don’t like books that directly address inequities, social justice, organizations and belief structures (e.g., churches, capitalism), and so on.

This idea may be related to the stagnation in historical romantic fiction that’s been widely explored in the past month (see for example this recent post at Dear Author). A novel about upper-class white people in the Regency period tends to be seen as apolitical and thus preferable to a novel about upper-class white people in Africa in the early 20th century (which reeks of colonialism), for example.

I’d like to offer a response to the truism arguing for a different, more expansive, notion of the political. I’m invested in this question because the books I’ve written outside the mainstream vis-a-vis the political, but also because I think it’s pertinent to how we see the genre.

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Poetical Thoughts

For the brave world is given to us

For all the brave in heart to keep,

Lest wicked hands should sow the thorne

That bleeding generations weep.

Julia Ward Howe, “From Newport to Rome” (1854)

Here’s the conclusion of the poem in a review of Howe’s collection Passion-Flowers in Graham’s Magazine.

The Liebster Award

So Pamela from the lovely Badass Romance blog has nominated me for the Liebster Award, which is less an award than a way to connect with other small and medium-sized blogs (fewer than 200 followers) and to share random things about yourself.

liebster-award

As a recipient, I must:

  1. List 11 random facts about myself.
  2. Answer 11 questions posed by the blogger who nominated me.
  3. Nominate 11 other blogs for the award and link to them.
  4. Notify the bloggers that they are awesome and have won a shiny pink blogging logo.
  5. Pose 11 new questions for my Liebster nominees.
  6. Thank the blogger who nominated me and link back to their blog.

It’s sort of like one of those chain emails from the late 90s, but without the gloom-and-doom “if you don’t pass this on” stuff. Without further ado, follow me below the fold.

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A Fine Romance Friday: A Very Long Engagement

So I had some terribly exciting news yesterday, but in typical fashion, you’re going to have to wait for it. Believe me, it’s good.

In the meantime, in honor of Memorial Day, my fine romance Friday recommendation is A Very Long Engagement, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s 2004 drama about World War I, starring Audrey Tautou, Gaspard Ulliel, and Marion Cotillard. It’s a really lovely movie — Jeunet and Tautou’s follow-up to the better-known Amelie — about a group of soldiers who shoot themselves during the Battle of the Somme in an attempt to get sent home from the front. They’re caught and face court martial. Tautou’s character, who suffered polio as a child, spends the movie attempting to figure out what happened to the men, one of whom is her fiance.

As you’d expect if you’ve seen Amelie, the film looks amazing. The cinematography, the costumes, the use of the French countryside, etc. are all gorgeous and do an excellent job setting the tone. The film is a triumph of mood, really, using color and music to create shifting atmospheres. It’s also oh so romantic as you wonder how precisely the central couple — Tautou and Ulliel — will get back to one another.

I’d recommend pairing it with a nice beaujolais and Adam Hochchild’s haunting non-fiction account of World War I, To End All Wars.

Cover Reveal

I have heard lots of authors say that their imminent publication started to seem real only when they saw the cover for their first book. Well, add me to that list.

Up to this moment, the thought of being published had a hazy, surreal, day-dreamy quality. The process just didn’t seem that different from what I’d already been doing. I’d been getting feedback on and revising Brave in Heart since last year, so it wasn’t like that was new. I’d been thinking about marketing the book for a long while, so actually starting to do so was sort of dream-like but not all that unusual.

But looking at the cover leaves me a little speechless. My manuscript is a book, a real, live book. How odd. How delightful.

Enough preamble! Do you want to see it? Well, follow me below the fold.

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