Wow... I made it!

Hello friends, I have arrived, lifting my head from endless research hours and settling into my new apartment. I moved recently and it's amazing how long someone can live out of boxes! But things are coming along and I realized that today is my day to post!

So this is more of a blog by to let everyone know that I enjoy coming by to check out everyone's posts and I hope to be back on track with the real world in the near future.

In lieu of a lesson or interesting tidbit from the research I've been doing for my next 20th Century historical novel (set in Africa this time), I thought I'd do a little shameless plugging. The Flyer is out! I received my copies a couple of weeks ago and it's so beautiful, I nearly cried. The artists at Medallion Press are certainly talented.

Here endeth the self-promotion and on to my actual posting: I've been watching Legends of the Fall repeatedly for the past week or so. Research, of course. My next novel has a hunter hero running from a past he can't get away from, and in LotF, Tristan also ends up in Africa as he runs from the guilt that he couldn't save his brother during the Great War. Recent events in my life have made the concept of happily-ever-after a little hard to write, so I'm thinking of taking this new project in a different direction... the epic novel that might be VERY romantic, but isn't a romance, per se.

My question for writers and readers alike is this: Writers: Do you ever find yourself in a position where you're unable to abide by the standards of your genre and the muse insists on taking you in another direction? And if so, do you listen to the genre or the muse?

And readers: If you're a romance fan, and a romance novelist you've enjoyed reading suddenly switches to another genre, would you tar and feather? Would you read the new work because you like the writer? Or would you simply skip that book and wait for another steamy romance with the traditional HEA?

I can feel the writing bug beginning to itch and after being blocked for nearly a year, I'm terrified to pick up the pen, so to speak. I'll be anxiously waiting any sage responses, and in the meantime... Tristan, Alfred, Susanna and Isabel 2 await...

Marjorie

Dutch Treat

Growing up in New York state, only miles from Sleepy Hollow (yes, that Sleepy Hollow) I had early exposure to Dutch history and folklore. Maybe numerous retellings of Washington Irving's "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (though I can't bring myself to see the Johnny Depp version; I know he's brilliant, but I can't bear anyone tampering with Ichabod Crane.)planted the seed and later the Valerie Sherwood novels I gobbled in college watered it. However it started, I'm noticing Dutch references in my own stories more often than not.

An urban legend about the ghost of a Dutch settler spooks the heroine of my first historical, My Outcast Heart. The hero of "Never Too Late" has a Dutch name, the heroine of my time travel WIP is proud of her Dutch heritage and one of the core families in the saga I'm co-writing with a partner is Dutch. In a novel I'm shopping around now, Jonnet and Simon fall in love while in the Dutch exile of the English Civil War. So, what's the appeal? Beyond the wooden shoes, cheese and tulips?

The Netherlands, or The Low Countries, depending on the period, enjoys a golden age during my favorite periods to set my romances. Duking it out with England and Spain for mastery of the seas, and the booming trade of the Renaissance, Dutch merchants and explorers traveled across the oceans to the Caribbean, and the New World. Tons of story potential both on the respectable side, and during the golden age of piracy that followed.

When a college friend tracked me down across campus to physically put a Valerie Sherwood novel in my hand and tell me I had to read it, the history and legends I'd absorbed in childhood took on a new dimension as I read her tales of love and adventure, in the bustling city of Amsterdam and the wilds of New Amsterdam colony with the wealth of the patroons contrasted with the new land. I knew I had to know more and more. In fact, I gleaned so much that I was able to ace a colonial history exam with an essay question about Dutch contributions to colonial society. Trust me, we can thank Dutch ingenuity in ice travel for keeping colonial trade going during the colonial winters.

Dutch women, historically, often had more rights and freedoms than their English sisters. They had an easier time if they wanted or needed to fend for themselves economically, even instigate divorce. Now wouldn't that be an interesting twist?

Ingenuity flourishes throughout Dutch history, with farmers, artists, artisans, scholars and nobles abounding. With the current market expanding to include a wider variety of settings, and the Fox network about to debut their New Amsterdam drama series, maybe readers will be interested in discovering a few Dutch treats of their own.

Shopry Interlude

Karen Mercury cannot post today because she's under the weather AND under serious deadlines. But you're welcome to come by my blog where I posted a few awesome, Muse-tingling photos from Shorpy.

Niggling Ideas

I am working hard to finish up my WIP in preparation for nationals, plus we move in a week, so I must make this brief!

Yesterday, over at my blog, I posted thirteen place/time settings for novels that I'd eventually like to write. Some of them are merely exotic locales about which I'd enjoy learning more. For others, I have actual plot ideas. But they all call to me at varying moments of WIP weakness.

Your turn: as writers, what three place/time settings do you toy with pursuing? As readers, what three place/time settings you would love to find on a bookshelf? They don't have to be MS secrets you are loathe to divulge, just ideas that niggle at the back of your brain. I'm just curious how far your imaginations stretch!

Fact & Fiction

Late this afternoon I returned from a tiring trip to Haiti for the day job and realized it was my blogging day at Unusual Historicals. I was going to blog about romance and history, but there's a little girl I met whom I can't get out of my mind.

I travel to Haiti and other poor countries as part of my work for a large international charity. While in Haiti this week, I met a restavek girl.

Restaveks are children who are given or sold to families in exchange for food, board and education. It comes from the French term meaning, "to stay with." Restavek children are frequently starved, beaten, sexually abused and do no attend school. They are nothing more than child slaves.

The young girl I met this week lives as a slave. To protect her identity, I'll call her Julie. She gets up at 6 a.m. to get water (many poor Haitian homes have no running water and fetch it from a standpipe) and then walks an hour to a feeding program. She gets food, brings it back and then cleans and does chores. At night she goes out on the street at 7 p.m. to sell light bulbs. She returns at 9 p.m.

If Julie doesn't sell enough light bulbs, she gets beaten. Julie talked to me through a translator and tears started dripping down her cheeks as she whispered how she was whipped with an electrical cord. She showed us her scars.

Julie hasn't seen her mother in four years. Burdened with hunger and five other children to feed, Julie's mother moved to an area where she has land and left Julie with a friend who promised "to take care of her." The friend sold her into slavery.

Julie's mother doesn't know where she is.

As Julie cried as she told me how she was beaten, I cried, too.

Restavek children inspired my third Egyptian historical, THE COBRA & THE CONCUBINE. In the story, Badra is sold into slavery at age 11, raped and beaten by a cruel sheikh. She eventually escapes, and finds happiness with the man she loves. After hearing the stories of restavek children, I wanted to create a happy ending for a child sold into slavery who finds true love in the end. This is why I write romance; because real life doesn't always deliver happy endings.

Authorities have been notified about Julie and there is a place where she can live that is solely for former restavek children. For me as an author, fiction sometimes is created from fact. Sometimes it startles and saddens me to see how both blend.

Badra in THE COBRA & THE CONCUBINE had her happy ending.

I hope and pray that Julie, the restavek slave girl, has one as well.

Seeds of Plots

Most of the time, I don't where my story ideas come from. They sort of grow. However, Sold and Seduced, my Roman set novel that is released in April in the UK had two distinct seeds.

The first came from a chance meeting with my now editor. Every year, Harlequin Mills and Boon has a glittering reception for its authors. At my first reception was I introduced to the new editorial assistant for historicals. We got talking and I mentioned that I was just finishing a manuscript with pirates. Great, she said -- I love pirates and dangerous men as heroes. My heart sunk. The pirates in A Noble Captive are not the heroes. But I thought -- how could I make a dangerous hero? And teh seed for my hero -- Fabius Aro was born.

But I didn't know the story I wanted to tell, just the hero who need a strong and interesting tale. Then about a week later, I was travelling back from a daylong workshop on writing with Harlequin Presents author, Kate Walker. She was explaining about her troubles with a manuscript. She said the sentence -- And the heroine has to marry X to save her father from prison. I will admit that I stopped listening at that point. The Beauty and the Beast plot with a very good reason for a Marriage of Convenience. If you are doing a M of C plot, you have to have a good emotional reason for the pair marrying. A tip I learnt very early on from an editor when she sent a long rejection letter explaining why a particular manuscript was not suitable.

My wheels in my brain were turning fast. I had a plot line for my dangerous hero -- and then I only needed to work out the specifics...how, why would my heroine feel compelled, why would her father agree, why would he disagree. That sort of thing. The things that make a plot a writer's own. I am a great believer that there are only a limited number of plots. In fact the Joseph Campbell/Christopher Vogler theory of the monomyth is very attractive. But I digress. I had the seed of an idea and then I had to adapt it to fit the historical milieu of the end of the Republic (Romans had four different forms of marriage).

The irony to this is once I did read Kate Walker's book. I realised that I had misunderstood her plot line totally. I was concentrating so much on my idea that her plot twist ( the heroine was being forced to marry an aging tycoon and not the hero) went over my head. And such are born ideas.

The next contest that I am running (and you do have to be a member of my newsletter) will be for a copy of Kate's book -- The Antonakos Marriage, and for a copy of Sold and Seduced. It is show how two writers can take the same seed -- a woman sacrificing herself for her family's sake and create two very different novels. The newsletter goes out on 1 April. And the details of how to join are on my website.

If you look at the US cover for Antonakos Marriage and Sold and Seduced, you will see a certain resemblance. The UK cover of S&S is lovely but has nothing to do with the story, except it evokes the general mood/feel. My editor who knew my story of the seeds swears it was a coincidence. My editor is known for her wicked sense of humour. I am not sure when Sold and Seduced will be released in North America. it will apparently have a different cover. (And yes I know it was the inside cover of Lyn Randall's Wife or Warrior) My next North American release will be in July with The Roman's Virgin Mistress.

What do other people think about the Vogler idea of the monomyth?