Simply Perfect lends itself to a cheesy blog-post title

I really loved Mary Balogh's latest in the Bedwyn Series spinoff the Simply quartet, which follows the stories of four teachers at Miss Martin's School for Girls in Bath. Simply Perfect tells the story of Miss Claudia Martin herself, neatly finishing off the package. Though, of course, there were enough colorful incidental characters that I wonder if we'll come back both to Bath and to the Bedwyn peripherals in the future!

You can read an excerpt of Simply Perfect here at Mary Balogh's site as well as keep up with the series upon series she's written.

I love when authors write in series and have old characters weave into new stories. I feel like I'm coming upon old friends, and it deepens my appreciation for those characters. I will fully admit that I don't always remember everyone -- I'm terrible with names and faces in real life, so some details are always lost to the fog -- but I remember enough to feel fond and enjoy meeting everyone again.

Simply Perfect lends itself to this sort of reunion nostalgia, because as the headmistress of the girl's school, Miss Martin has a perfect excuse to further her friendships with her former (is there another F word I can think of? No? Shame) teachers. And since her school's story is inextricably linked to that of the Bedwyns -- in particular her erstwhile charge, the incorrigible Miss Freyja Bedwyn as was, and her employer at that time, Wulfric the duke -- she rubs shoulders with all the Bedwyn crew as well, despite her reservations about doing so.

This, of course, is where romance novels, particularly series, can fall into absurdity. Almost every one of her friends has made an advantageous match with a noble, and this plain schoolmistress finds herself neck deep in titles as she spends a summer out in the country with her charity girls, enjoying aristrocratic hospitality. Balogh acknowledges the humor in the situation by having Claudia herself continually refer to the unlikelihood.

But to the love bits: Claudia's match is with Joseph, Marquess of Attingsborough and heir to a dukedom, a delicious tidbit in that she particularly despises dukes. Much of the novel he pursues his family's socially acceptable choice for him in an unromantic but fully understandable manner. I don't buy heroes and heroines from other cultures who flout their society's expectations without a second thought, so it made sense to me that it would take so many gradual degrees to move each of them into admitting and accepting their love for each other -- and then working to overcome the obstacles in their way. The same applies to how Joseph works out his situation with his blind, illegitimate daughter, figuring out how to truly care for a person society would have, for two reasons, put far away from public notice.

Whether everything works out in the end -- well, I'll leave you in suspense. You'll have to read the book!

And, yes, I see that it's been two months since I last read anything fun like this. Eep! Even writing this post was interrupted by a certain 15-month-old.

That reminds me that, when I was reading, I kept critiquing some of the parenting in the book with the daughter! I wanted them to stop saying "good job" to her, as if they could have read Alfie Kohn or somehow intuited his ideas! Oh, well.

It does make me think, as a writer, how much indirect influence you can have on readers. I do find myself in my own writing wanting to put in elements of my life and philosophies that are important to me. In writing historical fiction, of course, you always have to keep it plausible, though. I want my heroines to matter-of-factly breastfeed, for instance, but I know wet nursing was very common in the nineteenth century, so you almost have to make a point of saying how unconventional your heroine is for doing so.

Food for thought: How have you as a reader enjoyed or deplored "lessons" you felt novels were giving you? How have you as a writer tried to insert your own social agenda into your fiction writing?

Hilarity in The Erotic Secrets of a French Maid

I have checked out The Erotic Secrets of a French Maid, by Lisa Cach, approximately a gazillion times. Well, let's say twelve. I kept putting off reading it -- I would renew it twice, turn it in late, get back in line for it, get it again, and put it right back on my to-read shelf. I had liked a couple previous books by Lisa Cach, but I think I was slightly unnerved by the sultry cover of this one, and my library's categorization of this in "erotic fiction" vs. "romance novels." I was sort of excited by the idea of reading it, and sort of turned off.

This last time that I was turning it in, I finally read the back synopsis, something I often avoid in case it gives away too much of the plot (or mischaracterizes the plot, another pet peeve -- sometimes I wonder if the cover designers, editors, illustrators, and writers have read the book. Have you seen women on the front with flowing blond hair, only to read that she has short dark curls? But I digress...).

To summarize the summary, Emma is a wannabe architect and current housecleaner who meets and falls in lust with Russ, a decade-older software engineer who overworks himself in his grief over his brother's recent death. She half-jokingly suggests that she would be open to becoming a kept woman, and he later takes her up on the offer.

BUT...

The way he takes her up on it is HI-larious. I'm only a third of the way through the book, so I can't comment on it as a whole, but I just want to share part of the scene where he hires her to do more than housecleaning. I forgot how funny Lisa Cach is -- I remembered sexy, but I forgot the humor aspect of her books. This scene had me snorting and trying not to wake up my sleeping boys.

What Russ is trying to take her up on is her offer to shop and cook dinner for him along with the cleaning, but he fumbles the invitation in an effort not to make her feel like he's accepting out of charity. He knows she's looking for a place to live, so he starts off with offering his empty Belltown apartment to rent and then ambiguously states that he'll take her up on her offer.

"You're not offended, are you?" he asked warily.

She blinked. "No, I don't think so. I mean, I offered, right? [...] If I said yes, how often would you want..." She trailed off, finishing the question with her eyebrows.

"I don't think I need it every night. Maybe, oh, Monday, Wednesday, Friday? With something big on Friday to last me through the weekend?"

[...] "Er, what type of 'big' did you mean, for Fridays?"

He shrugged "Big. You know, lots of it. I'll leave the details up to you."

You gotta love that.

Give readers a taste

I was writing an article for a friend's magazine about parenting books I've found helpful, and I realized that I'd come to almost all of the books on my list through online resources. It reminded me of Jo Beverley's plug of Google Book Search, and my note that current books are also wonderful to have in full or in excerpted form online.

I think sometimes authors try so hard to "protect" their work — their ideas and their copyright — that they forget that the point is to get their writing out there. For some, it might be selling more books; for others, the message might be paramount. Either way, it's best to reach the widest audience possible.

I wouldn't have read 95% (I'm guessing here) of the books on my list if I hadn't been able to come to them in some way online first. Whether it was reading detailed reviews or blog entries, looking at excerpts online, downloading articles from the same author, discussing the ideas on forums, or whatever avenue, I needed frequent exposure to the book and author in question before I was intrigued enough to seek out and read the book for myself.

If you're an author or self-publisher, what does this mean for us?

Here are some suggestions for the online world of marketing:

• √ send out review copies whenever they're requested
• √ start a blog to talk about and get readers interested in your work and ideas
• √ host contests and polls to generate excitement, such as a vote on cover art or a character's name
• √ hold drawings to award copies of your books to lucky readers
• √ offer live chats with readers
• √ start a fan email list and send out occasional newsletters
• √ post short stories, articles, or sample chapters on your website
• √ allow and encourage others to link to your work
• √ visit other appropriate blogs and leave helpful comments with a link back to your site
• √ check out Google AdWords for targeted pay-per-click ads
• √ join and post on online message boards and create a tasteful signature that links back to your site

If anyone has other good online-marketing ideas, let me know and I'll add them to the list.

Why are heroes always fluent?

I always envy romance heroes and heroines, because they always manage to be fluent in whatever language is most convenient at the moment. It reminds me nothing of slogging through German and Spanish classes in school just to be able to make a fool of myself in both languages!

In that spirit, I bring you a realistic look at a modern-day bilingual hero. From the makers of "Ooh Girl!," here is "One Semester of Spanish Love Song":

Googling books for research and pleasure

I'm on a Jo Beverley kick and have just read A Lady's Secret. In her notes at the end, Beverley points out a good resource for writers, particularly of historicals: Google Book Search.

I'd been using it unwittingly for my other blog -- I found old-timey books on wet nursing such as A Treatise on Hygiene and Public Health.

You can also often search selections of current books to see if there are passages to interest you, such as The History of the European Family, which also gave me invaluable information on breastfeeding rates from days gone by.

Google Book Search is trying to scan in many copies of old and rare books to preserve and share them for free, and publishers and authors of newer books can offer a glimpse into their pages as a service to potential readers.

As a writer doing research or a publisher promoting a book, it's worth looking into. As a reader scouting out good new reads, it's also a treat!

Truth in sexual advertising

I'm loving this YouTube R&B song I first saw on Jo Beverley's blog:


My favorite line has got to be: "Chafing...." Or maybe: "I could give you 7 minutes if you don't move around too much."

Back to romance with Lady Beware

I've finally had some time recently to pick up some fiction. I've been enoying Lady Beware. I always love Jo Beverley's writing. She's a very skillful writer, with obvious competence in plotting, characterization, and dialogue. She's one of my biggest inspirations for what I want my romance writing to be like. I don't feel like I'm up to her level yet, but when I'm editing my work, I always compare it to writers like her.

I also love her Company of Rogues series. I think if you came in on the series in the middle that it would be confusing, which is why I always check bibliography lists to make sure I read series in the right order. Usually the library will have any earlier works as well as the current ones, and often they're automatically arranged by publication date. But to be sure, I check the author's website, such as Jo Beverley's book list here (it's not the easiest site to navigate, but it has a lot of info, including links to her blog and for joining her Yahoo! Group).

Anyway, I'm not done yet with Lady Beware, so I won't comment too much yet except to say -- man, I missed romance novels! It's so fun to be reading one again. Hooray! I love how drawn up I can get in the story, and at this point the Rogues characters seem like old friends to me. I'm always rooting for them, and for the romance, and Jo (I call her Jo) has never let me down!