Taking a Break

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while, and putting it off so so long that re-writing the task every day in my planner finally annoyed me enough to make a start.

The long and short of it is: I am not currently working on a historical romance. I’m not currently writing for publication at all.

My ‘break’ started a while ago, which means I’ve had a lot of time to think about the decision. Does it feel right, do I regret it, what are my plans. How can I explain it to readers?

I could write here all day, but in the interest of brevity there are two main reasons why I’m stepping back from historicals. One is that I don’t read them anymore. I used to read historicals all the time. I started writing them because—partly because—when you’re reading in a genre, it starts to feel like a conversation. A book stands on its own but you can always see how it’s picking up a theme that someone else tackled, twisting a trope that’s been popular lately. As a writer you start to think, “I have something to say, I have something to contribute,” and a whole plot will spin out from that desire to communicate, to join the conversation.

By the same token, when you’re not reading in a genre you lose that sense of urgency. The conversation is going on but, these days, I’m not listening. That’s a problem.

The second main reason is that my books aren’t making enough money. I can’t even explain how great it feels to do work and then get paid for it. I’ve gotten so used to believing that the satisfaction of a job well done is enough—or pushing myself to improve and knowing that I’m getting results—that getting an actual paycheck is… overwhelming.

I have some readers. I could be doing a lot worse. But I’m not making a living. It’s my own fault—I don’t write fast enough—but that’s the cycle. I’m not engaged with the genre so my words-per-day slow to a crawl, so I don’t make money, so the motivation wanes even more…

There are other incidental causes, but the truth is that if either one of those factors were different, I’d still be writing historicals. I tried so many different tactics to keep my writing on track and keep myself engaged and it wasn’t happening.

I’m still writing. In fact, I’ve probably been writing more and with more enjoyment than in years. I’m rediscovering what I’m good at, what I like, and I’m sure it’ll eventually add up to a new book... though probably not a historical. I won’t close the door on finishing my Sweetness & Light series, because I had it planned out with an endpoint in mind and I’d like to get there. But I can’t see that happening any time soon.

I hate admitting that I’m giving up, I hate admitting that I’ve failed. I’d rather be saying something different. Unfortunately, I am and I have.

Victoria the Queen, by Julia Baird

This is an excellent biography. And I want to break this down a bit, because it does several things at once and all of them well.

1. It's a chronicle of Queen Victoria's life with a perfect blend of context and anecdote. I really think this is the key to a good biography. You need enough context to understand why a person's actions matter, what makes them noteworthy or remarkable. And you need enough anecdotal detail to bring the person to life and liven up the pace.

2. It also tackles the question of: how does Victoria's image in the popular imagination differ from the reality of who she was, and why? Because the gap between the two is significant and--this is where it gets really interesting--she's not a distant historical figure at all.

Victoria reigned throughout most of the 19th century. She died in the 20th. She was a subject of significant historical interest from the moment she was crowned at 16, she kept a daily diary, many of her letters have been preserved, people who knew her took care to record their experiences and impressions. With such an abundance of source material to work with, so how did we get it so wrong?

The author--Julia Baird--does a pretty decent job of answering that question. This is possible partly because the history is recent enough that there's plenty of source material, but distant enough that distortions both intentional and accidental have had time to gel into a false narrative.

So the book does two things, primarily. It chronicles Victoria's life and it analyzes how history is made (and distorted). Both are pretty knotty.

Victoria lived to be 80, and most of those 80 years deserve to be covered. She had relationships with half-a-dozen different Prime Ministers, she acquired the title of Empress and lived long enough to see that empire begin to fragment, she oversaw two significant wars and a host of small ones. She was born before the age of rail and died in a world with cars. Providing context through a span of time that long requires some pretty judicious picking and choosing.

I might have wished for a little more, but I respected all of Baird's choices. She keeps the focus on Victoria--and pretty strongly on Victoria's personal life, on how her relationships broadened or narrowed her understanding of the role of Queen, the scope of her duties.

The fulcrum around which her views changed was Albert, and it was absolutely fascinating to read about Albert's ambitions, the many ways he cosseted and also belittled Victoria, until the prince who arrived in England as a pretty foreigner who Victoria wanted to keep out of politics ended up wielding power equal to hers, and at times overshadowing her influence with his own.

I kept thinking: if he'd been a woman, I'd have rooted for him. But he wasn't, and my lasting impression is pretty mixed.

But Albert died young. Victoria ruled for forty years as a widow, twice as long as she'd been married, and I don't think it's a coincidence that she didn't marry again. Or that when she took a lover, she picked a commoner with no ambitions of his own. Her famously extended mourning was much more strategic than I'd imagined.

Victoria's greatest strength was probably her understanding of what today we call 'optics'--she was a very skilled mistress of her own reputation. Which is ironic, considering how it's subsequently been manipulated.

One of the obvious distortions, just to give a quick and clear example, is that Victoria was a prude. No, not at all. Kind of the opposite. She was a total horndog. She married Albert because he was hot, enthused to her diary about how much she enjoyed sex, had eight children & when all that childbirth affected her health, she was most worried about whether or not she'd be able to keep having sex.

So what happened? A lot, actually. After Victoria died, her daughter Beatrice edited her diary & deleted everything she found inappropriate--which was a lot. Apparently an archivist managed to preserve a few pages from the purge, a little glimpse into all we lost.

But the whole family conspired to erase bits of Victoria's life they didn't like--like her relationship with her groom, John Brown. She kept her instructions for her own burial nearby at all times in a sealed envelope, so that it couldn't be destroyed, so that (among other things) she could be buried with a wedding ring from John Brown on her finger. Which was then covered with gauze, so her children wouldn't see it there.

So the family wanted to craft the narrative after she died, and they seized the opportunity to write the story their way--often against her stated preferences.

But there's so much more. Victoria's reputation is tangled with Albert's, partly because they presented a unified front. They were close, they acted as a pair, Victoria bent over backwards to give him as much legitimacy as possible. Most of his legacy has been folded into hers, and is now mistaken for hers.

Historians contributed to the problem. Baird points out that many historians writing biographies of Victoria primarily consulted the letters that she wrote to prominent historical figures. Which--hey--as mentioned, she lived a long life. You have to pick and choose. But the prominent historical figures whose correspondence they paid attention to were men, and many of them politicians. Some of these biographers wrote that Victoria wasn't very maternal, or didn't care much about her children, when really she didn't spent much time writing to the Prime Minister about her children. A broader review (of, for example, letters to female friends) yielded different results.

Baird weaves all of this together into a cohesive and entertaining narrative. Even though I've spent a lot of time reading and writing about the Victorian era I found much of it really surprising. Very strong recommend.

Romancing the Past

I’ve included one of my novels in a new anthology called ROMANCING THE PAST and it’s currently on pre-order for the limited-time of $0.99. That deal will only last for a few more days (until the 15th of September), but if you need more convincing I’m here to give it a shot.

It’s an anthology of ten full-length historical romances. A few of the authors involved, like Jackie Barbosa, are old friends of mine. I met a few for the first time while putting the anthology together. If you ask me, that’s what anthologies are all about: mixing up the familiar and the new, filling out a collection and taking a chance on a few books you might not notice otherwise.

I’ve included a favorite of my own novels in the anthology, The Lover’s Knot. The retail price on The Lover’s Knot is $3.99 and it won’t be going on sale as a standalone anytime soon—so if you just want the one book, you’re already winning.

The Lover’s Knot is a second chance romance between a cold, forbidding duke and his ex-fiancée, a stubborn businesswoman with a mysterious scar.

Soon after Julian, the hero, inherits his title he realizes that his predecessor, the previous duke, didn’t die of natural causes as has been reported to the world at large. He left behind a suicide note, but Julian recognizes it as a forgery. What’s more, he’s certain that his ex-fiancée, Sophie—who received a substantial bequest in the old duke’s will—is behind the forgery. The romance develops as the mystery unfolds.

But there are 9 other novels in this anthology! Let me list the others:

• A Duke is Never Enough by Darcy Burke

• Dealing with the Viscount by Clair Brett

• What If I Still Loved You by Erica Taylor

• The Lost Lord by Carrie Lomax

• An Earl For Ellen by Catherine Bilson

• The Spy’s Fake Bride by Jackie Barbosa

• Not Quite a Rogue by Tanya Wilde

• Hotel Oriente by Jennifer Hallock

• Once a Fallen Lady by Eve Pendle

I’ve been reading through these novels over the past few weeks as we get the anthology ready and I want to highlight a couple of them.

First of all, Hotel Oriente by Jennifer Hallock. I loved this book. It’s got an easy, fluid style that’s both readable and vivid. It’s set in Manila and the location just pops to life as you read, the humidity and the architecture and this very specific historical moment—anyone who reads my novels for the historical detail will love Hotel Oriente. The romance is not too angsty but the conflict really did have my heart in a twist: the heroine is an aspiring reporter and the hero, the manager of the Hotel Oriente, could easily be ruined by some of the scandal she’s uncovering in his hotel. I wanted her to succeed! I didn’t want him to be hurt! And the resolution was really delightful.

I also really enjoyed Eve Pendle’s Once a Fallen Lady. She’s got an interesting take on the rake trope—or should I say the fake rake trope? Like a lot of rakish heroes in romance novels, Oscar is a surprisingly good guy: he’s thoughtful, politically involved (and the book has lots of fun details about period Parliamentary wrangling), self-controlled, and sexually abstemious.

The difference is that Oscar really was once a rake, and not the cute kind. As a young man he ruined a young lady, got her with child and refused to marry her. By the time he’d grown up a bit and realized what a jerk he’d been, the window of opportunity to do the right thing had closed.

So now he wears this reputation like a hair shirt. He’s changed, but the guilt lingers and it defines him. It’s admirable that he hasn’t moved on and it’s also a terrible shame. Meanwhile, the heroine—Lydia—is grappling with the very good reputation that she worked hard to build but which never quite sat right, or felt authentic to her. I loved the way that her own discomfort with who she’d become mirrored Oscar’s.

So those are two recommendations and I’m sure I’ll have more. If you’re tempted, now’s the time! It’s $0.99! You can buy the anthology at or find it at Amazon US, Apple Books, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and also find it on Books2Read (a links hub that will direct you to most major retailers), or Goodreads.

Tenet, God of War

I usually like Christopher Nolan. I like puzzle-box plots. I like any story that plays around with the nature of memory, or our experience of time. Nolan’s movies all have puzzle box plots and most of them play around with the nature of memory or our experience of time. I’ve heard some people dismiss Nolan as a director whose movies aren’t smart so much as they make audiences feel smart and… if so, I guess that’s me. Because I usually really like Nolan. 

But I hated Tenet. Nolan tends to favor plot over character—you’re watching to find out what happens, not so much to spend time with the characters. The more I write, the more I feel like this is the wrong choice, even though a good puzzle-box can be incredibly fun.

Anyway. Nolan tends to favor plot over character and he’s made it work in the past. But his earlier movies featured characters who were sketchy, sure, but those sketches were vivid and compelling. The characters in Tenet are mostly cyphers. If our main character, Protagonist, has a home or a family or a hobby, we never find out about it. He’s not from anywhere; he doesn’t have worries or cares that do not pertain to the plot. I mean, his name alone is a signal that exists to serve this story.

So what about the story, then? Is it an exciting puzzle? Is it a fun adventure? Eh. I’d say no. But let’s break this into two parts: the goal and the conceit.

The Goal: The goal of the movie is actually really simple: seize the Macguffin before the Bad Guy does. If the Bad Guy gets the Macguffin, the results will be catastrophic. Described vaguely but repeatedly as ‘worse than a nuclear bomb’, or the start of ‘WWIII’. When asked to clarify, no further information is forthcoming. Still, a simple and clear objective: get the Macguffin, stop WWIII.

The thing about “stop WWIII” or “get the Macguffin before the bad guy does,” as plot drivers is that while they’re great at creating forward momentum, giving the characters an excuse to make plans and do things, they’re not actually interesting. They’re just a delivery system for things like amazing characters or snappy dialogue or clever cat-and-mouse antics.

Tenet does not deliver any of those things. It mostly delivers spectacle. Every step toward this Macguffin requires a lot of spectacle.

You could call Tenet a heist movie, since it contains at least three heists, but that would be an insult to heist movies. The fun of a heist movie relies on extravagant table-setting: introducing characters whose expertise will be challenged by the heist, watching them plan their approach, and then seeing how those plans play out. Inception is actually really good at this. Tenet is not. At best, our main characters mention the goal of a heist (“We’ll break into X in order to achieve Y”) before jumping to the action. The scenarios are complicated, both because they involve intricate plans and because they’re usually foiled in some way, requiring the characters to react on the fly. Proper set-up could have made these sequences easier to follow and quite neat; instead they’re incomprehensible.

So it’s just spectacle. Watch the plane blow up. Watch the bomb go off. That sort of thing. If you like watching things blow up, great. if you don’t… Tenet is probably not the movie for you. And that’s the sad truth.

The Conceit: The central conceit of Tenet is time inversion. There’s some science mumbo-jumbo attached but the end result is that objects and people can be made to move backwards through time. At first, it seems like time inversion tech is in very short supply—like there are maybe a handful of unspent inverted bullets in the world, assorted debris mostly used for scientific research. By the end, entire subplots and whole battles depend on ‘temporal pincer movements’ where half the combatants are moving forward through time and half of them are moving backwards. Eventually we’re tracking two Protagonists, one moving forward through time and one backwards, and it is not easy to tell them apart. They look the same, sound the same, have the same priorities and attitudes.

I believe that ‘time inversion’ could have been really cool. I believe this because there are a couple of moments where it actually is cool. There’s a character, very nearly the only female character in the movie, who is a pure damsel in distress. She exists solely to make bad decisions and inspire others to make bad decisions. But she has the best time inversion setup + payoff in the movie. There’s another one involving Robert Pattinson’s character that’s really well set up, too.

But for the most part, ‘time inversion’ is frustrating nonsense. Various characters in suits and labcoats keep telling us that time inversion is a huge danger but they can’t explain why. Meanwhile, the movie is constantly showing us that inversion is an endless and escalating logistical nightmare.

Worst of all, the concept is not at all intuitive. It’s counter-intuitive. It is very hard to process; my mind constantly wanted to reject the inverted scenarios on the screen. I had to wrestle my own brain into submission in order to follow the action. It was a constant struggle. And the movie does not help, even though it could! The action is so fast, it’s so poorly explained, the visual signposting is so rudimentary and frustrating.

It was a struggle to watch and it had no rewards. No payoff, no denouement. It’s a very simple story with very poorly drawn characters and the conceit is simply not well-enough realized to carry the rest.

Also: God of War. I played the most recent God of War game. I understand all the praise; it’s well done. It’s a coherent story with great characters and a strong emotional arc. The scenery is gorgeous and fantastical. It makes sense and it’s fun to play. But, in the end, not for me. No hard feelings or critique, just not my thing.

Roma, Crimson Peak

Just watched Roma and it’s incredible. On Netflix, very worth the time. I thought it would be kind of depressing but it’s not. It is, however, a movie that is best enjoyed with a particular mindset. You have to be ready to just chill, relax and enjoy the journey, let go of any impatience. While there is a story, and I ultimately found it very moving, there isn’t much action.

I’m going to give an example of something that worked super well for me, and probably hit me as hard as almost any emotional beat in a movie I’ve seen recently. One plot involves a father abandoning his wife and children, running off with his mistress. Early on, you see the father pulling into the family’s driveway at the end of a day. The driveway is very narrow and the car is pretty roomy, so it’s a slow process. He pulls in, realizes he’s an inch or two away from scraping the paint, pulls out, corrects his angle, pulls in, repeats. I was watching and thinking, “Sure, this is beautiful and atmospheric but why did I just spend a whole minute watching a man park his car?”

Well, there’s a reason. The father runs off. The mom is an awful driver—probably because she hasn’t driven much; the family seems to have a driver, at least part-time—but this is the car they’ve got and she’s on her own so she bangs around in it. Watching her park is painful. She does not have the skill or the patience to painstakingly pull in, back out, correct, pull in, back out, correct. She scrapes up this car pretty badly.

And then one day, toward the end of the movie, she comes home in a new car. It’s smaller. It’s not such a tight fit in the narrow driveway. She can pull in without a crisis. And the second she climbed out and said, “This is our new car,” I had this moment of just—intense joy and admiration. Really intense. Because I knew, the second she said it, that she was ready to move on. That she’d gotten over the worst of her grief and anger and she was ready to face her life, and the challenges ahead. It was so beautiful. Nobody ever explains this in dialogue—you just feel it. It was so well done, though, and everything about the way the movie was shot and paced all made this moment work.

It’s also just a gorgeous movie. Every single shot is stunning. Though this is where I had my only quibble. The director, Alfonso Cuaron, also directed Children of Men. And you know how when Children of Men came out there was so much buzz about the super-long single-shots? With a super complicated take that lasts for six minutes in a moving car with all kinds of wacky stuff happening? I heard about it so much at the time. And I liked Children of Men. I loved Roma! But it’s like every. single. shot. in Roma is that one shot from Children of Men. It happens so often that I stopped feeling swept away and started feeling distracted instead.

Especially because the long shots are only half the pattern. Roma has the super long shots, with lots of moving parts, which are always—I really want to emphasize this—extremely gorgeous and impressive, but Roma also tends to juxtapose a very quiet scene with the main ensemble cast against a very lively, spectacular backdrop. On the one hand, this works so well. You really get a profound sense of how while we’re all caught up in our little dramas, the world keeps turning, time marches on, life is out there teeming in all its glory and its chaos and its terror. You’re in a bubble with this family but it’s transparent, you can see through it to the shifting panorama on the other side.

It really works. Both as a spectacle and as a way of enhancing the essential core of the film. But it happens so often and it’s so distracting. Someone in the main ensemble will walk from Point A to Point B. That will be the sum total of the action we get for our main cast. The core story is so chill, there is so little action, they’re often just walking from Point A to Point B. And in the backdrop you’ll see like a wedding with a band playing and everyone’s dancing or hugging, or a man being shot out of a canon at a traveling circus, or police in riot gear attacking a crowd of student protestors. Just really wild stuff, and the ensemble characters often pay no attention to it at all.

By the end I’d see these stunning tableaux and I’d be like, “Wow, wow, wow,” and I’d also roll my eyes a little.

Final note is that the central character, Cleo (played by Yalitza Aparicio), is the maid to this family and she carries the movie so well. She’s quiet and doesn’t talk much but she has an amazing presence—she communicates a huge range of emotion very subtly & is so lovely, sweet and strong and good. The real reason why this movie never feels like a drag is because she’s always there, and she’s always good to spend time with. Really amazing acting.

I also watched Crimson Peak which… it’s fine. I dunno. Very atmospheric but no real surprises. I didn’t care much about any of the characters.