Tag: The Sister Queens

Exclusive Sneak Preview–Galleys for THE SISTER QUEENS

I was thrilled to receive several full-color galleys for my novel, The Sister Queens, last week.  For those of you not familiar with the term “galleys,” they are uncorrected proofs of a novel.  When they are in bound form as mine are they can also be called ARCs (advance reader copies).  How I wish I had enough galleys to share with all of you who have been regular visitors to my site and so supportive of my writing. Alas, however, I do not.

I just had to find another way to share a sneak peek at the galleys and my excitement over them (and I AM excited because this is as close as I’ve come to holding my writing in actual book form). So, though I am by no means a technically savvy person, I’ve created a short “Galley Preview” video. Hope you enjoy it.

Make a video – it’s fun, easy and free!
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To Trail or Not to Trail,That Is the Question (a book trailer, yes or no?)

If cost were no object I would definitely make a book trailer.  It would be just like a big-studio film trailer—atmospheric music, gorgeous settings, first-rate live actors, dramatic editing effects.

But cost is not irrelevant.  Not in my world (if it is irrelevant in yours and you want to bankroll my big budget book trailer just let me know).  So when I got my book contract and started to plan my personal promotional budget I had to look critically at every possible piece of the marketing puzzle.  As part of that process I asked myself what I could reasonably expect to achieve with a book trailer for The Sister Queens, and given that did I want to invest in one?

Never one to make a decision in a vacuum (or to miss an opportunity for goofing off on YouTube when I should be reading an obscure reference work), I looked at dozens of book trailers.  Along the way I realized that writers of historical fiction face special challenges because our trailers must create and populate a rich visual world removed in time and place from the present and transport the viewer there.  Of course we had to do this in our novels as well, BUT we were working with words and that left the visual images up to the fertile brains of our readers.  In a visual medium (a video trailer) we must craft the images ourselves (or pay someone to craft them), and they must be convincing.

Having finished my “tour de trailers” I have pretty much decided that not to do a trailer for The Sister Queens.  But I’ve been known to make the wrong decision (more than once even).  So I am asking you, AS READERS (fellow writers, put your “readers hat” on please) to disabuse me of the following conclusions I drew along my journey.

Lots of book trailers view like educational power point presentations.  They have music, they have art.  Sometimes they manage to have both from the same (and the correct) period.  They might even have well-done voice-overs (don’t get me started on the trailers that just have rolling text like extensive film credits).  But I have to admit a vast majority of book trailers without live action felt educational to me.  This was true even of the trailers that wove a bit of author interview in (this technique reminded me of the “talking heads” used in documentary films).

I am big on education (especially history education), but I thought the purpose of a book trailer was to make me want to BUY THE BOOK.  These fact-heavy trailers full of still images just didn’t sweep me up and leave me all shivery the way good film trailers (and by good I mean trailers that make me come back and plunk down money to see the full product) can.  I guess when a visual medium—video—is employed I want action.  So what about trailers featuring live actors?

Live-action trailers can be more gripping but NOT if they look homemade.  Blame the production values I am used to seeing in costume-drama on PBS, but if I can tell that a live-action trailer for a book set at the Tudor court was made in someone’s dining room or backyard, you’ve lost me.  If the costumes look homemade or, god forbid, halloweeny (if that is not a word I hereby create it), I can’t even watch to the end.  My reaction to such trailers is similar to when I attend a recital at which one performer botches badly and I don’t know where to look because I am just SO embarrassed for him.  I know this is unfair because creating a realistic look for a historical trailer is difficult whereas if you write a contemporary novel you can come up with a convincing setting and wardrobe pretty easily.  But I guess we historical novelists ought to have thought of that before picking a genre because the bottom line is I am not willing to forgive hokey.

And then there are the acting and editing aspects of a live-action trailer.  Have a look at the trailers for The Borgias or The Tudors or Game of Thrones.  Setting aside any historical accuracy issues you may have, have you ever seen a book trailer that looked like them?  I haven’t.  They are pure, pulse-pounding drama.  If these were book trailers I would crawl over broken glass to buy the books.  But I suspect they cost big, BIG money (see paragraph 2 – I do not have big money).

Finally, even if I poured vast sums of money into a trailer (and was subsequently divorced by my spouse and beaten to death by my children whose tuition payments I failed to make as a result of my spendthrift ways) I am not sure how many people would see it.  Yes, I know they are out there on YouTube but that is a huge pond and trailers are little fish.  How can I be certain that potential readers would ever see my trailer?  Many of the trailers I looked at had low “views” numbers.  Of course I could put the trailer on my website as well, but presumably if I have managed to lure some unsuspecting potential reader to my site the blurb for my novel will provide her with the best way of gauging both the content of my book and her interest in it.  There simply needs to be a better and more direct forum for readers to browse trailers before I would consider pouring cash into one.

I will close by admitting I saw some good trailers—trailers that did their authors and the books they represented proud.  Even so, I have no way of knowing whether or not those book trailers were effective in interesting readers and generating sales.  So I am back where I started, no book trailer for me.  Unless one of you wants to point out my errors of reasoning.  Any takers?  The comment section is wide open.  Do you use book trailers to select books?  Has a trailer ever sold you a novel you didn’t already intend to buy anyway?

The Sister Queens at Barnes and Noble (dot) com

Barnes and Noble is the latest addition to a growing list of vendors accepting pre-orders for The Sister Queens.  So, those of you who are B&N members and have been patiently waiting to be able to use your free express shipping – wait no longer 🙂

Location, Location, Location — Thoughts on the Use of Genuine Locations in Historical Fiction

My dear friend historical romance author Miranda Neville wrote an interesting piece at The Ballroom blog.  The gist of Miranda’s post is that writers have an incredible collection of historical real-estate to browse when creating settings for their historical novels (whether straight or romance), and at each location we can cherry-pick the very best parts and amalgamate them into something new.  For example, Miranda incorporated The Marble Saloon at Stowe into the fictional Mandeville House—setting for her just released The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton as well as two of her other romances.

Miranda’s post got me thinking about several additional points relevant to historical settings—specifically, pertaining to the use of real locations rather than locations created in the mind of the writer.

Timing is everything!  Great cities, great cathedrals, and houses (both great and not so great) change over time.  When an actual historical location is used in a novel we need to remember that—however iconic—that setting was not stagnant.  Whether you are describing the skyline of Avignon or Westminster Abbey you’d better know what period you are writing about before you begin waxing wane with descriptions.  And as a reader, you shouldn’t be too quick to expect certain locations to look certain ways (e.g., as they did when you visited, or in Aunt Irma’s postcards).

For example, Westminster Abbey is a true historic landmark.  Millions have visited it, and many more have seen it in pictures or movies.  What they’ve seen—and the images that rise to their minds when the Abbey is mentioned—is not the Abbey that existed when Eleanor of Provence was crowned Queen of England there in 1236.  In fact, Eleanor’s husband, Henry III, was responsible for a masterful renovation of the Abbey (leaving it dramatically changed for generations to admire), a reconstruction that took years.  As a result, the Abbey would have looked very different at various points in my novel, The Sister Queens.

Similarly, for much of its history (and today) the outline of the city of Avignon has been distinguished by the Papal Palace (gorgeous). But at the time of my novel, when Avignon was part of the Count of Provence’s territories, the great medieval palace seen in paintings and photographs didn’t’ exist.  Describe Avignon including the palace and get it wrong.  Read expecting to see the palace and it won’t be there.  This is why it’s a darn good thing that . . . .

Historical novels are NOT guidebooks.  While it IS important not to be anachronistic when portraying settings—making certain not to include features in an exterior or interior that didn’t exist in a particular time period—it is okay not to flesh out every corner of a room or every façade of a palace.  I certainly believe that an author needs to know the world of her novel in depth in order to move her characters through it convincingly, but, unless you are describing the maneuvers of troops in a battle, sharing too much detail is unnecessary.  A little era-setting detail often goes a long way.  Readers like to use their imaginations, or at least this one does.  When an author throws in too much description just because she/he has the research to support it, or when I feel he/she is showing me miniscule detail gratuitously (the details themselves are interesting or intriguing but in no way relate to the plot), I start to skim.  Skimming is bad.

Of course there ARE occasions when an infusion of detail can enrich the reader’s experience.  This is particularly true when we want readers to share the sensory experiences of a character—a young woman overwhelmed by the view from a chateau, or nearly dizzied by the incense-saturated air and soaring voices singing the Laudes Regiae in a magnificent abbey.  Nothing can draw a reader into the emotion of a moment more effectively than the purposeful inclusion of carefully selected details of the historical setting.  But note that I said, “purposeful inclusion” and “carefully selected.”  Filtering is a must.  Try to load the same level of detail into every scene in your historical novel and you ruin the effect.

Writers can also use setting itself as catalyst to move a scene forward.  Of course on the large scale this fact is obvious—pick any scene in a historical novel and move the setting as a form of exercise (from the gardens of a grand Château to its great hall).  The meaning of and physical movements in the scene are likely to change, even if you attempt to keep the dialogue the same.  But, setting as catalyst can also occur in small subtle ways in fiction as it does in real life.  Have you ever noticed something—on your desk, outside your window—that, serendipitously, makes your mind leap to a new place and to a particular idea or to action?  That can happen to characters too.  A mother picks up a bird’s nest and thinks of her children.  The pattern in a window reminds a character of a gown and thus of a particular partner from the ball the evening before.  I find as a writer I often want, even need, to place a certain scene in a certain setting in order to take advantage of elements of the architecture or décor that I know by my research would have existed in that place at that time.

What about you?  As a writer how do you handle the REAL real-estate that makes an appearance in your work?  As a reader how much detail is enough to make you feel immersed in the past?  Where does the amount of detail cross a line, leaving you bogged down?  Do you have strong feelings about the balance between real settings/descriptions based on research and locations/rooms created in the mind of the author?

The Sister Queens Now Available for Pre-Order at The Book Depository (UK)

Just in case you live on Guernsey in the English Channel (or for that matter anywhere in the UK as they are the UK’s largest dedicated online bookseller with the largest range of titles in the world) I am happy to say The Book Depository now has The Sister Queens for pre-order. Their website tells me (and I am willing to believe it as I have no inclination to count the days myself) that I am now 224 days from my launch day!

But seriously, you do not need to live in the UK to order The Sister Queens (or any other title) from the Book Depository.  They ship FREE to an amazing number of countries through out the world.

Give Me A Little Kiss – Sex and the Historical Novelist

There is nothing new about sex.  Birds do it, bees do it, and our ancestors most certainly did it (to butcher Cole Porter’s lyrics inexcusably).

What IS relatively new is the amount of sex appearing in “straight” historical fiction (I use this term to distinguish historical fiction from historical romance, not to imply that only heterosexual hanky-panky is included).  If memory serves, the historical novels of my youth did a lot of fading-to-black.  But somewhere between my decision to become a writer and my first book deal a shift occurred.  Today there are plenty of sex scenes in straight historicals—some of them quite explicit.  And sex seems to be a popular addition.  For example, a video recorded at this year’s Historical Novel Society Conference during a popular event called “Late-Night Sex Scene Readings” (the reading of a scene from Gillian Bagwell’s The Darling Strumpet) has received over 6,000 hits on youtube since June.

Opinions on this trend vary.  Here is mine: the inclusion of sex in historical novels is neither good nor bad in a vacuum.  It’s not the sexual content that determines whether a particular scene works—it’s whether that scene (sex or otherwise) has a REASON for being in the novel.  Tossing in an orgy (or even a kiss) into your work of historical fiction without a solid reason is a bad idea.  The scene will feel “added on,” and gratuitous sex is no more acceptable in a novel than gratuitous dialogue.

So what can intimate scenes sometimes do well?

Forward the plot.  Yep, just like any other sort of action a sex scene can move a novel’s plot forward.  For example, one of my manuscripts includes the seduction of a royal courier for the purpose of getting a letter into his satchel.  This letter is an important step on the path to the book’s central climax.  So the sex scene (in a stable and pretty exciting in its own right, I might add) is vital to the forward motion of the novel.

Flesh out (sorry, I just HAD to) relationships between characters and/or give us emotional insights into characters.  Sex, as we know from real life (or at least some of us know – no pressure on or disrespect to celibates reading this), is seldom merely a physical act.  It has emotional ramifications, and can be a language all its own.  So, a sex scene in a novel (whether vague or graphic) can be effectively used to give readers a sense of how characters relate to each other.  For example, in my debut novel, The Sister Queens, readers learn a tremendous amount about one of my female characters and her relationships with two separate men simply by the contrast between her sexual experiences with each.

Help set the story firmly in its historical period.  Sexual politics, mores, and practices change over time.  For example, in certain periods, a man’s dominion over his wife’s body was complete – there was no such thing as rape between a man and his wife.  Likewise, for hundreds of years sex (seduction, withholding of, etc) was one of the few tools available to a woman seeking power or influence.  While today we would surely condemn a man for taking his wife by force and likely censure a woman for using sex to get ahead, seeing either such event a depicted in a historical novel reminds readers of the realities of the past and of our characters’ lives.

Beyond raising large issues of this sort, the inclusion of period details pertaining to sex—the acceptable positions for intercourse, its prohibition on certain days, the forms of birth control that were or were not available—can help build the “historical world” of the novel just as the inclusion of other period details can.  In my novel frequent reference is made to payment of the “marriage debt,” and one of my female protagonists feels wronged when her husband spurns intercourse with her.  As a matter of history she was entitled to feel gypped because, under the doctrine of the medieval Church, a married man was obliged, under penalty of mortal sin, to give his wife sex as a preventative measure against temptation to sins like fornication and adultery.

Give the reader a thrill.  Yep, this one is legitimate too.  But wait, Sophie, you are thinking, “you wrote five paragraphs ago that gratuitous sex is not acceptable.”  Since when, dear writer, is giving the reader a bit of fun gratuitous?  Meeting the needs of the reader is our business.  We meet needs for escape.  We meet emotional needs.  We help readers wrestle with difficult questions in their lives.  For heaven’s sake why should meeting readers’ needs for a bit of titillation be off the table?  And why should meeting that need be solely the province of historical romance?  Plenty of contemporary novels—from thrillers to literary fiction—include sex.  I believe that writers working anywhere along the historical genre continuum should feel free to include intimate moments as well.

What do you think?  Would you prefer to see explicit sex kept for historical romances alone?  Can the inclusion of sex in a straight historical novels can be a positive addition?

 

Confessions of an Alpha Female – In Which My Sister Points Out What Should Have Been Obvious

So, we are getting my son a puppy.  My son is the shy type and likes constant companionship so a dog seems like a perfect fit.  A boy and his dog. . .you know the stories (not Where the Red Fern Grows or stories like that—the HAPPY stories).

I phoned my sister to tell her the news.

“This is going to be his dog right?” she asked.  I sensed a certain skepticism.  Perhaps she didn’t think he could handle a dog at nine-years of age.

“Oh yes, we’ve talked about the responsibilities,” I babbled.  “He helped select the breed and we picked an ultimate people dog, a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.”

“You’re missing my point,” she replied somewhat impatiently.  “How are you going to keep the dog from bonding with YOU?  You are such an Alpha.  You had better line up a trainer before the puppy even arrives.”

Wow. ‘A trainer for who?’ I was tempted to ask.  My son, the puppy, or me?  But the question would have been facetious.  As soon as the words were out of her mouth and bouncing off the satellite to my mobile phone I knew exactly what my sister meant, and was left wondering why I didn’t see it before.  I am a very “in charge” person.  Dogs are attracted to dominant people. . If this dog is really going to be my son’s dog we will need some advice on how to get it to bond with my son and see him as the pack leader.

No.  I am not going to continue blogging about dogs.  I am going to blog about sisters.  Because what this story really illustrates (you were wondering, admit it) is one of the driving themes behind my novel, The Sister Queens—our sisters act as mirrors for us; when we forget who we are or when we fool ourselves into thinking we are something we are not, they call us on it. Continue reading Confessions of an Alpha Female – In Which My Sister Points Out What Should Have Been Obvious

Invention is the Midwife of Good Historical Fiction

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but invention is the midwife of good historical fiction.

Invention and creativity are good things. But in historical fiction we (writers) sometimes lose sight of that, and get bogged down in the minutiae of our period and the thousand little details in our characters’ lives.  I was recently reminded, with force, that readers come to authors of historical fiction for something more than a collection of facts.

I had the opportunity to hear Susan Vreeland, a master of the genre, speak at a recent Historical Novel Society Conference.  I thought Susan was going to do a presentation on her latest book.  But, when we were gathered before her in our neat little rows, she decided to tackle a larger issue – the role of invention in historical fiction.

“Don’t be tyrannized by fact.”  That’s how Susan opened her presentation.  And she is right of course.  Historical fiction is not academic history.  Does accuracy matter in historical novels?  You bet your farthingale it does but, “fictional art can show truth that goes deeper than a collection of fact; it can show us what it felt like to be a particular person at a particular time” (again, Susan V).  Besides, “as soon as something happens people start lying about it” (Cecelia Holland) so “truth” in history can legitimately be debated.

Susan pointed out that selection (and correspondingly, elimination) of facts is part of the process of writing compelling historical fiction.  Good authors know instinctively – whether they write historical fiction or another genre – that telling just the right bits is what gives a great story its focus.  Authors of historical novels must choose only those events from history that relate to the specific premise/themes of their particular novel.  It doesn’t matter how interesting an event is (or how pivotal it is in the life of a historical character), if that event doesn’t forward the plot of the book an author is writing, then it needs to be left out.  There were dozens of interesting events in the lives of my main characters, Marguerite and Eleanor of Provence, during the twenty-year period covered by The Sister Queens that did not make it into my novel because they were not germane to the “sisters” theme of my book. Continue reading Invention is the Midwife of Good Historical Fiction

On This Day In Her Story

Today I am inaugurating a new series here at blog-central called “This Day In Her Story.” I will use it to feature historical tidbits that are germane to the stories of my sisters Marguerite and Eleanor of Provence.  Enjoy!

On This Day In Herstory #1

July 17th 1242 – The marriage contract between Henry III’s brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall, and Eleanor’s sister Sanchia is concluded.  Talk about keeping it all in the family 🙂



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