Vroom!

Posted on February 22, 2011 by Victoria Janssen

Since I’m currently working on some erotica set during World War One, I’ve gone back to my research materials.

The photo above reminded me of one of my favorite scenes in The Moonlight Mistress. It was a scene I didn’t realize I was going to have until I got to that point and started writing.

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Lucilla watched Kauz’ housekeeper finish with the laundry, pick up a basket, and go inside by a rear door, letting it slam behind her.

Lucilla stared at the motor, thinking.

Pascal emerged. He did not turn towards the side garden, but walked quickly towards her, his shoulders rigid. He ducked behind the tree’s trunk and swore.

“Stay calm,” Lucilla said. She picked up her bag and handed him his rucksack. “The servant went inside. We’ll walk to the motor now. There’s no crank, it must have a self-starter.”

“He refused.”

“Then we commandeer his vehicle. Isn’t that the word? You know how to start the engine, don’t you? I can do it, if you don’t know how.”

Pascal only hesitated a moment before seizing her arm and walking back towards Kauz’ home. The motor was parked in the garden.

“Not too quickly,” Lucilla murmured. “We must behave as if we have every right.”

“He will hear the engine.”

“There’s a clear path from his garden to the street. We must be quick. Do you know where he is, in the house?”

“He returned to his library.”

Laughter gurgled in the upper region of Lucilla’s chest as she ducked beneath damp shirt-tails, fluttering in the summer breeze. Pascal pushed his way through a sheet. She would never have dared this on her own, would never have entertained such desperate measures had the night not changed her entire idea of herself. She would never have imagined that stealing a motor could be such a thrill.

She laid her carpetbag gently in the rumble seat, took Pascal’s rucksack, and laid it in as well. Pascal quietly opened the door; he fiddled with the spark and throttle levers while she arranged herself to block him from view and kept a wary eye out. He looked at her beneath his arm. “When the engine catches, be ready. You must drive.”

Lucilla nodded and gathered her skirts into her hands. The engine roared and Pascal threw himself onto the seat, sliding across. She followed, remembering to release the hand brake before she slammed the door and sent the motor into high gear. She hadn’t driven in over a year. “It’s like cycling,” she said to herself, turning onto the street. Behind them, she heard slamming doors and shouting. She gave the motor more petrol, and soon the shouting faded. It was satisfying to drive faster than Kauz could run. She hoped he’d seen her. He could add thief to whore, she thought with savage glee.

c. 2009 Victoria Janssen

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GoodReads, LibraryThing, or Shelfari?

Posted on February 21, 2011 by Victoria Janssen

I currently have accounts at GoodReads, LibraryThing, and Shelfari. I can’t seem to commit to a single one.

Of the three, Shelfari seems the least complex, which in some ways is an advantage. Also, I like their “bookshelf” widgets, such as the one I use over on the left column of this blog. But I find the interface is somewhat awkward, and I find I use it mainly for the widget and as backup.

GoodReads seems to be the most social. There are all kinds of ways to follow people’s reviews, join discussions, and the like. Unfortunately, much as I love the idea of those features, I must admit I don’t actually use them because I have so many other demands on my time. I might have added a brief review once or twice. But to keep up with all my reading, not to mention all the books I added to my GoodReads account at the start…the very idea makes me want to go lie down and have palpitations.

Finally, there’s LibraryThing. It seems to be the most useful, to me, for cataloging purposes, and I purchased a permanent account some time ago. I entered my World War One research library, or most of it. One of these days…yes…I’m going to really put all of my books up there. Really, quite soon now. Any minute now I’m going to buy a CueCat to scan ISBNs, and unpack all the boxes of books in my closet, and scan those suckers! And my library will be complete and in one place!

Except for the books I’ve lent out. And the books that are stored with my family for various reasons. And…sigh.

One of these days.

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Siegfried Sassoon, “Died of Wounds”

Posted on February 20, 2011 by Victoria Janssen

Died of Wounds

His wet white face and miserable eyes
Brought nurses to him more than groans and sighs:
But hoarse and low and rapid rose and fell
His troubled voice: he did the business well.

The ward grew dark; but he was still complaining
And calling out for ‘Dickie’. ‘Curse the Wood!
‘It’s time to go. O Christ, and what’s the good?
‘We’ll never take it, and it’s always raining.’

I wondered where he’d been; then heard him shout,
‘They snipe like hell! O Dickie, don’t go out…
I fell asleep … Next morning he was dead;
And some Slight Wound lay smiling on the bed.

–Siegfried Sassoon, The Old Huntsman and Other Poems, 1918

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Siegfried Sassoon, “The Hero”

Posted on February 19, 2011 by Victoria Janssen

The Hero

‘Jack fell as he’d have wished,’ the Mother said,
And folded up the letter that she’d read.
‘The Colonel writes so nicely.’ Something broke
In the tired voice that quavered to a choke.
She half looked up. ‘We mothers are so proud
Of our dead soldiers.’ Then her face was bowed.

Quietly the Brother Officer went out.
He’d told the poor old dear some gallant lies
That she would nourish all her days, no doubt.
For while he coughed and mumbled, her weak eyes
Had shone with gentle triumph, brimmed with joy,
Because he’d been so brave, her glorious boy.

He thought how ‘Jack’, cold-footed, useless swine,
Had panicked down the trench that night the mine
Went up at Wicked Corner; how he’d tried
To get sent home, and how, at last, he died,
Blown to small bits. And no one seemed to care
Except that lonely woman with white hair.

–Siegfried Sassoon, The Old Huntsman and Other Poems, 1918

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Guest at NINC Blog

Posted on February 18, 2011 by Victoria Janssen

I’m a guest at the Novelists, Inc. blog today, on Moderating Panels at Conventions.

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When It Rains, It Pours

Posted on February 17, 2011 by Victoria Janssen

There’s something I’ve noticed about writing. Excuse me while I philosophize for a while. Often, writing itself, or sometimes doing things to do with writing, seems to create its own momentum.

For instance, if I feel I haven’t sold anything for a while, I’ll “cast bread upon the waters,” which to me means looking at calls for submissions, emailing to check on submissions that are already out, looking to see if I have any finished or partially-finished stories that I can send out in response to those calls, etc.. Or I’ll devote some time to promotional efforts, perhaps seeing if anyone needs a guest blog, or perhaps trying something new, like a new social media platform.

I won’t necessarily see immediate results from any of these actions, but action always feels better than nonaction, and eventually, I often do get results. I think part of it might be just thinking about writing…which makes me, well, think about writing, and move it to the front of my mind, which leads to me working more and better on writing, which leads to good results.

For instance, I didn’t do much writing for several months, but in December, I pulled out a novel synopsis from a while back. I reworked some of that synopsis into a new synopsis that could be a short story. I sent it to my agent, who submitted it to Harlequin. That was mid-December, when nothing much happens in publishing.

Recently, I finally went back to a novel I’d had to abandon and began reworking it into a shorter piece, 15 – 20,000 words. At the same time, I started having ideas for a new novel, and am working on a synopsis and worldbuilding for that. When I had a draft of the ex-novel, I found some first readers, and this week, I’ve been revising the draft in order to send it to them, for a look. Working on the shorter piece seemed to inspire me to have ideas for a new novel.

About a week ago, I heard back from my agent; Harlequin bought the story for Spice Briefs, the one for which I’d submitted a synopsis in December. It’s due several months from now, so I have plenty of time to write it. That sale gave me an idea for other potential submissions.

There’s not really a magical connection between all these events. But it sure feels like there is. We humans make patterns of random events, and I think we can manipulate that tendency to our advantage. If I see working on multiple projects brings a sale my way, isn’t it a way of encouraging myself to work on multiple projects? And it goes without saying that looking for places to submit, then submitting appropriate stories to them, is likely to lead to sales. Much likelier than, for example, not submitting stories is likely to lead to sales!

Every time I’ve dragged myself out of doldrums and cast bread on the waters (or maybe ducks are eating it), something good has come of it. Positive reinforcement never hurts!

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Linkgasm: Cool Writing Stuff

Posted on February 16, 2011 by Victoria Janssen

It’s been a while since I’ve posted links, and they’re starting to pile up! I have interesting friends. Some of these links came to me through them.

WriteWords Phrase Frequency Counter. Enter a number of words in the phrase (2 – 10) and then enter text, the more the better. I pasted in an entire novel. Hit submit, and the software will give you a list, from most frequent to least frequent, of all the phrases you repeated in your document. If you use only two-word phrases, note you’ll probably get a high frequency of “he said” and “she said.”

First Sounds is “is an informal collaborative of audio historians, recording engineers, sound archivists, scientists, other individuals, and organizations who aim to make mankind’s earliest sound recordings available to all people for all time…The most newsworthy feat accomplished under the First Sounds banner was when collaborators succeeded in playing a sound recording made in 1860 – 17 years before Thomas Edison invented the phonograph. Roughly ten seconds in length, the recording is of a person singing the French folksong “Au clair de la lune, Pierrot répondit.” It was made on April 9, 1860 by Parisian inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville on his “phonautograph” – a device that scratched sound waves onto a sheet of paper blackened by the smoke of an oil lamp. Scott made the recording to analyze sounds visually, not to play them back. (Edison retains the distinction of being the first to reproduce sound in 1877.)”

An Electronic Cabaret: Paris Street Songs, 1748–50, Sung by Hélène Delavault, a supplement to Robert Darnton’s Poetry and the Police: Communication Networks in Eighteenth-Century Paris.

My escape from Donington Hall: preceded by an account of the siege of Kiao-Chow in 1915 by Gunther Plüschow, in translation. This is another example of the absolutely amazing research material one can turn up online. I haven’t read it yet, but oh what an amazing resource for fiction!

And just for fun, the Shakespeare Insult Kit. Thou pribbling unchin-snouted joithead!

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What Characters Look Like

Posted on February 15, 2011 by Victoria Janssen

This is another post based on a question from Tumperkin, who is really good at making me think.

The gentleman whose picture is illustrating this post is actor Vincent Perez. Many writers have said they use pictures of people to help them visualize characters; often pictures of actors or models, which makes sense, because those people have their pictures taken a lot, and it’s easy to clip them from a magazine and tuck them into your notebook or hang them on a bulletin board. I don’t do that, though.

A side story, somewhat relevant: for The Moonlight Mistress, I was filling out the information sheets for art and marketing. I decided to try the actor thing, retroactively. I wasted a lot of time looking for appropriate French and Belgian actors to cast in my novel. None of them really worked, but I gave some names anyway (Vincent Perez being one, as sort of like Fournier, though Perez is prettier). The point of this story is that it wasn’t until then I realized that Noel Ashby, one of the British characters, bore a resemblance to British actor Damian Lewis. I hadn’t been picturing Lewis at all as I wrote, but when I thought of “English, redhead, good-looking,” he was pretty much it.

So, the point of this story is that I’m not a very visual person. I like to look at things. But when I’m thinking about things, I don’t tend to visualize them.

I don’t get the whole “movie in my head” thing some writers get. Instead, I get the story from the inside. It’s more a voices thing with me, and a weird sort of tactile sense that isn’t really tactile. If I need specific images, I often have to go and get a picture and then directly describe based on that picture.

When I’m creating a character, they grow from the inside. I know their problems and motivations long before I know the color of their hair. Sometimes, I assign basic physical characteristics almost at random: this one has dark hair because of his ethnicity, so this other one will be blonde. Or, everyone has dark eyes! This guy must have blue eyes.

To keep “physical” track of a character in my head, I will usually assign them one or two key physical points. Those points are like epithets in Homer, or tags on a blog post. I mention those tags, and hopefully the reader gets a sense of the character. Fournier, whom I mentioned earlier, is “marked by his height, his pronounced Gallic nose, and a truly spectacular air of untidiness.” Those three things, plus his tidy moustache, are pretty much it for me so far as appearance goes. I doubt I would recognize him on the street.

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Jane Kenyon, “Year Day”

Posted on February 14, 2011 by Victoria Janssen

I have a Valentine’s playlist up today at the new Heroes and Heartbreakers here.

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Year Day

We are living together on the earth.
The clock’s heart
beats in its wooden chest.
The cats follow the sun through the house.
We lie down together at night.

Today, you work in your office,
and I in my study. Sometimes
we are busy and casual.
Sitting here, I can see
the path we have made on the rug.

The hermit gives up
after thirty years of hiding in the jungle.
The last door to the last room
comes unlatched. Here are the gestures
of my hands. Wear them in your hair.

— Jane Kenyon
from From Room to Room

Indiebound | Amazon | Powell’s | B & N | Borders

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Siegfried Sassoon, “Stretcher Case”

Posted on February 13, 2011 by Victoria Janssen

Stretcher Case

He woke; the clank and racket of the train
Kept time with angry throbbings in his brain.
Then for a while he lapsed and drowsed again.

At last he lifted his bewildered eyes
And blinked, and rolled them sidelong; hills and skies,
Heavily wooded, hot with August haze,
And, slipping backward, golden for his gaze,
Acres of harvest.

Feebly now he drags
Exhausted ego back from glooms and quags
And blasting tumult, terror, hurtling glare,
To calm and brightness, havens of sweet air.
He sighed, confused; then drew a cautious breath;
This level journeying was no ride through death.
‘If I were dead,’ he mused, ‘there’d be no thinking–
Only some plunging underworld of sinking,
And hueless, shifting welter where I’d drown.’

Then he remembered that his name was Brown.

But was he back in Blighty? Slow he turned,
Till in his heart thanksgiving leapt and burned.
There shone the blue serene, the prosperous land,
Trees, cows and hedges; skipping these, he scanned
Large, friendly names, that change not with the year,
Lung Tonic, Mustard, Liver Pills and Beer.

–Siegfried Sassoon, The Old Huntsman and Other Poems, 1918

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