Tag: Brave in Heart

From the Round File: Brave in Heart

It is a truth universally acknowledged that I always start writing books in the wrong place. I have yet to pen a manuscript and retain the first chapter through revision. I always add something or, more often, throw something out. Often, thousands of things. The delete keys speaks poniards, and every word stabs. (Quick, name that play!)

I’m currently writing the second entry in a series about DC staffers and, only about 20,000 words in, I’ve trashed the first half of the first chapter. I really liked what I cut. As an introduction to the heroine and her voice, it worked. There wasn’t a backstory dump, it wasn’t slow or boring: it introduced the dynamic for the book, but it did so in such a way as to undercut the relationship between the hero and the heroine. If there’s a sin in romance writing, that’s it. So into the round file (aka the trash) that opening scene went.

Since I can’t show that scene to you because I haven’t even shown it to my editor yet, I’m going to show you the unrevised, original first chapter of Brave in Heart instead. Needless to say, this isn’t how the finished product reads.

In this case, the cut occurred because nothing happens in this eight page-opening. In this earlier draft of the book, Margaret and Theo’s separation was much longer (brought on about a fight about the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, rather than John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry of 1859). The prologue didn’t exist yet. There was just…this.

Now I like the image of Margaret on the top of the hill. And while much of this writing made it into the book (albeit in other forms), some of her backstory didn’t. As a writer, I needed to know these things about her and writing this was the only way to learn them.

What I’m trying to say is writing something you don’t ultimately use in a book isn’t falling down the rabbit hole, it’s process. It’s inevitable and futile and a little bit beautiful. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.

Continue reading “From the Round File: Brave in Heart” →

Reviews and Spotlight Round-Up

Our vision of a writer working alone in a garret, the solitary genius producing art on his own, couldn’t be more wrong. And not just the genius part, at least not where I’m concerned: books simply aren’t produced by one person working alone, not in one in a hundred instances. While I may have drafted on my own, I wouldn’t be able to write and to polish without the support of my critique partner, the lovely Genevieve Turner, the editors at Crimson, and my beta readers (particularly Kimberly Truesdale).

But if writing and revising a book require the efforts of dozens of people, marketing and promoting takes a smallish army. For Brave in Heart’s release week, the book was featured and reviewed all over the place. In case you missed any of these…

Over at the Crimson Editors blog, I blame Ken Burns (the documentary filmmaker) for my career as a romance novelist.

Jamie and Kati at Romancing the Rake spotlighted the book.

Long Ago Love ran an excerpt.

USA Today’s Happy Ever After blog noted Brave in Heart in its round-up of new historical releases.

The book was reviewed at Chick Lit Reviews and News, Badass Romance, Romantic Historical Lovers, Romance Reviews Today, Reading with Analysis, and The Reading Cafe. While some reviewers have loved Brave in Heart, others were more circumspect — but all have been thoughtful about a book that I know isn’t the typical historical romance fare, from the heavy setting to the non-alpha hero. I’m overwhelmed by the generosity of everyone who read and supported the book in its first week of release.

Thank you all so much!

Brave in Heart Launch Giveaway

To celebrate the release of Brave in Heart — it’s here! it’s really here! — I’m giving away a digital copy of the book plus a $15 gift card (either to Amazon or Barnes and Noble) to one lucky winner. Entering is easy — follow me on Twitter, Tweet about the giveaway, add the book on Goodreads, or follow the blog (or all of the above). If you’ve already purchased the book, because you could just sense its awesomeness and couldn’t wait, you can still enter and gift the digital copy to someone should you win.

For complicated reasons Rafflecopter and WordPress don’t get along, so I can’t embed the widget, but here’s the link: Brave in Heart Rafflecopter Giveaway. Enter early and often, my friends, and thank you for supporting me and the book!

Continue reading “Brave in Heart Launch Giveaway” →

Teaser Tuesday: Brave in Heart

So in less than one week, Brave in Heart can be yours. Yes, I know: the anticipation is killer. (What? A writer can dream.)

To whet your appetite, here’s a tiny weeny teaser in honor of Teaser Tuesday. Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday: Brave in Heart” →

Why Should You Read Brave in Heart?

“So, Emma, I see that you wrote a book,” you say.

“Yes indeed. Funny you should mention it. It’ll be out in two weeks.”

“But why should I read it?”

Well…

  • It’s a second-chance-at-love story. As I’ve discussed before, this is one of my favorite tropes. It is almost as close as it’s possible to come to a universal experience. In the back of all our heads is that nagging little question, “What if?” Brave in Heart explores that scenario.
  • After a prologue, a postcard from the past if you will, Brave in Heart starts with a dance. There is almost always a ball in historical romances, but the dresses? The music? The subtext? How can you not love a novel that opens with dancing?
  • One word: angst. “The course of true love never did run smooth,” Lysander says in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And for Margaret and Theo, this statement is practically etched in sky-writing over their heads (if of course there had been planes in the mid-nineteenth century). But their stumbles toward happiness are all the more rewarding for the difficulties along the way.
  • The stakes are high. There’s a war on. A deadly, terrifying war that the characters care deeply about. Every kiss, every conversation could be the last one.
  • Love letters that burn up the page. Or the, um, Kindle. You know that you’ve read Wentworth’s letter over and over again. In the course of Brave in Heart, Theo and Margaret spend a lot of time apart. The letters they exchange are their only contact for months at a time. It’s in the letters that you see them fall in love. Beta readers and earlier reviewers have consistently told me that the letters were some of their favorite parts of the book.
  • The book features an accurate, compelling historical voice. If you’ve ever complained about wallaper historicals, then Brave in Heart is for you. I wanted it to read like it could have been written in 1863 (except now with sexytimes and faster pacing), including the diction and grammatical forms.
  • Also, if you’ve ever complained about how narrow the scope of historical romance has become, give this a try.
  • It’s a little book, meaning it’s short (41,000 words) but also it’s done in watercolor. It’s about quiet moments between adults who want to love each other and just can’t figure out how to given their historical circumstances.

If this sounds interesting, you can pre-order the book on Amazon, add it to your to-read shelf on Goodreads, or find out more about it here.

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.

Continue reading “Margaret Mitchell’s Long Shadow” →

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.

Continue reading “Land Where Our Fathers Died” →

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.

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.

Continue reading “Cover Reveal” →

Letting Go

In the wee small hours of the morning, I sent my final edits of Brave in Heart to the folks at Crimson. There’s one more copyedit stage, but that’s only for egregious, but minor, problems — typos, spelling errors, and so on.

Once I hit “send,” I sighed and smiled. I recognized that the feeling flooding my limbs had a name. Relief. And I enjoyed it for about twenty seconds before gasping panic expelled it from my body.

You mean this book I started writing a year ago doesn’t get to change again…ever? You mean that I’m stuck with these words in this order for the rest of time?

Continue reading “Letting Go” →