Weekly book post

Now that I'm settling in to my new day job, I've decided to shoot for three blog posts per week, on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. The Sunday post will be whatever is on my mind, usually writing or research-related, or a guest post. Thursdays will be food and cooking, as I try to work my way through at least one new recipe from every cookbook I own. And Tuesdays will be my reading updates.

So, here's what I've read since the last time I blogged my reading. It's a bit heavy on the nonfiction and research books, partly because I'm working out my hero's backstory of service in and around Upper Canada during the War of 1812 and partly because my library holds list suddenly spat out a pile of nonfiction all at once.

1) The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict, by Donald Hickey

A fairly in-depth history. It focuses on the American point-of-view but was still useful for giving me an overview of how the war played out. At the risk of letting my contemporary political views show a bit, the War of 1812 comes across as depressingly reminiscent of the Iraq War in some ways--the party in power pulled the country into it for rather dubious reasons and damned anyone who disagreed as traitors, for example.

2) Crown and Calumet: British-Indian Relations, 1783-1815, by Colin Calloway

As the title says, a book all about relations between the British and Native Americans from the end of the American Revolution through the War of 1812. Fascinating, at least for me, because it's an aspect of Native American history I'd never run across before.

3) Love Story, by Jennifer Echols

A YA romance where the hero and heroine work out their feelings for each other and complex history together over the course of a writing seminar as college freshmen. I enjoyed it, as I always do Echols' books, though I have to admit I would've liked to see a longer last chapter or an epilogue or something just to sort of enjoy the couple together after all they went through to get there.

4) This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, by Drew Gilpin Faust

I was lucky enough to take Drew Faust's class on the American South 1607-1861 lo these many years ago as a Penn undergrad, so when I saw this book mentioned on a blog (more than likely Ta-Nehisi Coates' place), I sought it out. It's a depressing read--naturally, since it's a book about death--but I couldn't put it down all the same. It's about how the massive carnage of the Civil War changed how Americans related to war deaths in particular and mortality in general. One of the many things that struck me was that in the 19th century, a dead soldier's family wouldn't have found any consolation in hearing that their son/husband/brother died so suddenly that he didn't have time to suffer. Instead, they valued the "Good Death," wherein the dying person knows what's happening, accepts it with a show of faith and resignation (so consoling to the family as reassurance they'll see him again in heaven), and passes on loving messages and words of wisdom for those left behind. So when soldiers did die instantly, their friends would write their families these reassuring messages about how Joe saw this coming, he had a premonition and was perfectly resigned to the possibility and had been living a good and prayerful life, and so on.

Welcome, Rose Lerner!

Rose Lerner and I met in 2004, long before either of us were published, at the Emerald City Writers Conference. Over the years we've become critique partners and good friends, and I'm delighted to welcome her here today to talk about her new release, A Lily Among Thorns. I first read this book years ago for critique, and it's one of my favorite historical romances EVER. Solomon and Serena are such wonderful, well-developed characters, and I love how they play against the usual romance stereotypes. Today Rose is answering my questions about her books, not to mention Avatar: the Last Airbender (one of our current favorite shows), and giving away a copy of A Lily Among Thorns to one reader who comments by midnight on Monday. I know you do extensive research for each of your books. What was your favorite part of your research for A Lily Among Thorns? Probably the research on London. During the Regency, the divide between London and the rest of England was really marked, kind of like the way we conceptualize New York City versus small-town America. It's not just based on the reality of those places, it's symbolic. (Anyone else tune in for the first episode of Hart of Dixie?) Most aristocrats of the time had a foot in both places, because they spent the Season in London and the rest of the year at their country estates. But Solomon and Serena, my hero and heroine, both work for businesses that are based in London. They're Londoners year-round. That means something important about their self-images and about how others see them. Plus, Serena has strong ties to the seedier side of London life. So I wanted the feel to be right. The Regency Underworld by Donald A. Low, Black London by Gretchen Gerzina, Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century by Graham Robb, and Immigration, ethnicity, and racism in Britain 1815-1945 were all great resources for me. What was the hardest part? A forged marriage certificate is an important plot point in the book. My protagonists can't find a reliable way to prove it's forged, so they decide an annulment is the simplest way to go. But annulments were hard to get! Society valued the security of marriage very, very highly and made it very difficult to invalidate. I've read over and over that you could get an annulment if a marriage wasn't consummated, but it's just not true. The truth is that you could get an annulment if the husband was permanently impotent--and there was a hard-to-fake test to prove it. Using a false name was not, in and of itself, grounds for annulment, and neither was being underage. Mistaken identity (twinswap, anyone?) was a pretty safe bet but irrelevant to my book. Coercion and fraud were grounds for annulment but what exactly constituted coercion and fraud were interpreted differently by different judges, and in all cases interpreted fairly narrowly. I tore my hair out over this stuff! I love that LAT has such a unique title. Why did you choose it? I like using quotes for my titles. They carry a lot of associations and meanings with them, and that really appeals to me. My first book was called In for a Penny from the saying, "In for a penny, in for a pound," which worked a few different ways with the story, and my WIP is tentatively titled Sweet Disorder, from a poem by Herrick. "As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters" is a quote from the Song of Solomon. (And I'd like to thank Alyssa Everett for convincing me to keep the title in that form. I was originally planning a play on words that would have been a big mistake.) What I like about the title is that it speaks to how Serena misreads situations because of her own fears. She sees Solomon's faith as a threat to their relationship, because a respectable Christian could never accept someone with her past and reputation. But to him, his religion also means the love expressed by the Song of Songs. It's about doing the right thing, but it's also about reconciliation and forgiveness. She also sees herself as a cold, prickly person who can't help hurting the people around her--a thorn among lilies. But Solomon helps her see the truth: she's a lily among thorns, a vulnerable young woman who's managed to survive and even do well, despite danger and challenges on all sides. Your heroes tend to be "betas." Did you set out to write betas on purpose, since they're so rare in the genre, or is that just the kind of hero your muse delivers to you? Can you see yourself writing an alpha hero someday? (Not an alpHOLE, of course ;-)  ) Hmm, it's tricky. In the case of Solomon, I definitely did it on purpose. There was a very particular type of alpha hero that was popular in Regencies when I started writing Lily. He was beautiful and fashionable and snarky and he showed absolutely no emotion. He had two tells: going a shade whiter under his tan, and a muscle working in his jaw. That was it. His mother could die in front of him and maybe he'd go all out and do both. The heroine in these books was usually very innocent and very emotionally open. She won the hero over by giving him the unconditional, almost unshockable acceptance he'd never gotten from anyone else in his life. And I wanted to see what that dynamic, specifically, would look like if you switched the genders. In general, it's a little more complicated. I think in romance, sometimes "alpha" is equated with "strong." But when you get right down to it, it's just a personality type. To me, alpha means natural leader, someone who in any given situation will be calling the shots. Beta means someone who can stand back and give someone else their full support. Both of those are great things! They take different kinds of strength, that's all, and are conducive to different kinds of weakness. And I wish there was more of both available. I have a lot of love to give! My very favorite type of hero is a combination, really. To me, Nev (the hero of In for a Penny) is a...well, I guess the kinky term would be "switch." I don't know if there's a romance term. He's the leader of his group of friends. People on his estate naturally like him and look up to him. When he needs to take control of a room, he can. But he's willing to step back and let Penelope be in charge when he thinks it makes sense. My favorite flavor of alpha is so alpha he hasn't got anything to prove. Half the time he doesn't have to make you do what he says, because he can make you want to do what he says. He can even let you run things for a while and still know he's in charge, really. SEE: Captain Kirk. He can turn command over to Spock without thinking much of it--but that's his ship, Mister, and it always will be. And my favorite flavor of beta will shut you down in a heartbeat if he doesn't trust you or like how you're doing things. I think what people miss, with the idea of betas, is that a beta chooses who to give his loyalty to. He doesn't just roll over for anyone that walks in off the street! And he can take all that energy that he would have put into maintaining his personal control over situations, and put it somewhere else. SEE: Mr. Spock. He's got no interest in running the Enterprise. He loves being a Science Officer, and he's perfectly content to let Kirk have the responsibility, the credit, and the glory. That doesn't mean he can't 1) beat Kirk in a fight or 2) beat Kirk in an argument, if he thinks it's necessary. But most of the time, he doesn't. Two different personality types in a mutually beneficial and emotionally satisfying relationship based on affection and trust. Beautiful! Again, this doesn't mean I don't love lots of types of heroes, including the stiff-upper-lip alpha with a jaw square enough to draw a blueprint off of. Can I see myself writing an alpha? Definitely. In fact, I've got a plot bunny for a high-performing, alpha revenue officer right now! I don't know when I'll get around to his story, but hopefully soon. What are you working on now? I'm almost done with a draft of a book about the 1812 Parliamentary general election. By the local rules of her town, the middle-class heroine's husband would be eligible for a vote...if she were married. (Yes, this is historically plausible!) The younger-son-of-an-earl hero is sent to the town to find the heroine a husband, but as we all can see coming a mile off, he falls in love with her himself! It's not sold yet so I don't actually know yet if it will be my next book out, but believe me, when I know, I'll tell everyone who will listen! (Had to throw in an Avatar question!) I know Azula is your favorite, but what about the Gaang? Aang, Katara, Sokka, Toph, or Zuko? Speaking of things we could all see coming a mile off, definitely Zuko. I love how cranky and angry he is. I love how he's staked his identity on living up to his father's standards even though those standards have never done anything but humiliate him and devalue who he really is. I love how he's not very good at things and compensates by trying way too hard and taking everything way too seriously. I love how dramatic he is about everything. I love that it seems perfectly reasonable to him that after his uncle refuses to blast him with lightning, he should go stand on a mountaintop in a storm screaming at Nature to do it instead. I just want to give him a hug and a towel and say, "You're getting all wet, sweetie, maybe you should take a nap instead." But really, I could go on for that long about every single person in the Gaang. Avatar is one of the very best shows I've seen for just really consistent, sharply drawn, endearing characterization. Thanks for stopping by, Rose! By the way, the Kindle edition of her 2010 release, In For a Penny, is on sale for $3.79 through 10/3.

A mind full of new things

I survived my first week at my new job. It's going pretty well so far, but the nature of the work is such that I'll have little weekday daytime internet access. So I won't be spending as much time in the Twitterverse and blogosphere as I've been used to doing.

I'm also in deep research mode for my 2012 novel. For reasons that would take too long to go into here, my editor asked me to change my hero's background from service in India and then in the Peninsular War to the War of 1812. Which is fine, except for the tiny obstacle that until the last ten days or so ago I knew next to nothing about the conflict in question. Seriously, if you'd asked me what I knew about it, I would've said something along the lines of, "I think it was mostly about impressment of American citizens into the British navy. Oh, and Francis Scott Key wrote 'The Star-Spangled Banner' while watching the bombardment of Fort McHenry, the British burned the White House, and Andrew Jackson won the Battle of New Orleans, which was fought after the peace treaty was signed, only of course no one could've known because there hadn't been enough time for the news to cross the Atlantic." In other words, not nearly enough to give my hero a proper backstory.

Why, you may ask, do I know so much about the Napoleonic Wars and next to nothing about a war my own country actually fought in? Well, my dirty little secret is I started researching the military side of the era because I had a crush on this guy:



And the more I researched, the more I became an admirer of this genteman:



...neither of whom were at all involved in the War of 1812. Though the government did ask Wellington if he'd go in late 1814. He said, basically, that he had no objections to going, but he'd like to wait till spring in hopes of finishing business at the Congress of Vienna, and, besides, unless the British could reestablish naval superiority in the Great Lakes, another general and more soldiers wouldn't help all that much. There's probably a counterfactual or two to be had there--what if Wellington had been in command of the British forces at New Orleans? No WAY would he have attacked such a well-chosen and well-defended position. Half of Wellington's considerable battlefield genius was choosing his ground well, whether on offense or defense, and only giving battle when his forces were in a position to prevail. If Andrew Jackson never got the prestige he garnered at New Orleans, it's doubtful he would've been elected president, and American history would be much different. And if Wellington hadn't been at Waterloo, I still don't think Napoleon would've gotten to keep his throne--Europe was too united against him--but he probably would've lasted longer, and the different manner of his defeat would've reshaped European history.

So, yeah. You can probably already tell that, ten days of researching in, I've become fascinated by the War of 1812 in spite of myself. It really ought to be taught more thoroughly in schools--that bit I'd learned about American sailors getting impressed into the Royal Navy is a GROSS oversimplification of the causes of the war. It's really appalling how the then-ruling Democratic-Republican Party maneuvered the US into the war despite being ill-prepared for it, suppressed dissent, and somehow came out even MORE powerful and claiming victory despite the fact we were lucky to escape with a draw. I'm still no admirer of Andrew Jackson.



Mr. Fraser and therefore Miss Fraser are members of the Cherokee Nation, so Jackson was no friend of my family's ancestors. Of course, I'm definitely a Scots-Irish Southerner and almost certainly part Creek myself...so history is complicated. But when I think Jackson, I think Indian Removal and the Trail of Tears first.

I was quickly reminded that Tecumseh was also involved in the War of 1812, though, and I think my hero is going to meet him. Because Tecumseh was AWESOME.

I'm such a research geek. But it's so FUN.

Busy busy busy!

I've been quieter than usual both on this blog and online in general for the past week because I'm changing day jobs. My new job starts Monday. And I have a completely illogical superstition that if I ever have a wholly clean desk other than on my first or last day at a job, that job will disappear. Totally illogical--but so far I and my sloppy desks have avoided layoffs and downsizing, so why fix what ain't broke, you know? It couldn't be a combination of luck and skill; it's all down to the piles of paper and the inbox nowhere near zero! But as a result my last few days in a job are always a mad scramble to tie off loose ends and get paperwork properly filed. Lots of working late and coming home tired, very little blogging and tweeting. So I'll be back once I'm settled into my new job.

What I've been reading lately

My library's summer reading challenge is over, but of course that doesn't mean I'll stop reading (though I probably won't try as hard as I did during the challenge to never read two books from the same genre in the same week, because sometimes I get in a mood where I only want nonfiction, or where nothing hits the spot like reading six trad Regencies in a row).

Anyway, here's my reading from the last week or so:

1) Rules of Attraction, by Simone Elkeles
Genre: YA romance

A sequel to 2010's Perfect Chemistry, also featuring a Mexican hero with gang ties he'd like to break and a privileged white girl heroine. A quick, page-turning read, and I liked how the hero and heroine sort of unpacked each other's protective layers to find the real person underneath.

2) You Are What You Speak, by Robert Lane Greene
Genre: Nonfiction (linguistics/history/current events)

I'll always pick up a book on linguistics, and I found this book especially interesting in discussing how language interacts with political identity, social class, and the like.

3) In the Garden of Beasts, by Erik Larson
Genre: Nonfiction (history)

Larson looks at Nazi Germany before WWII through the eyes of the American ambassador at the time (a history professor with no previous diplomatic experience) and his family. Reading it, I was for the first time able to do something with 1930's Germany I've been able to do fairly easily for other places and times--put myself in the place of people living through it who had no idea how it would turn out.

4) The Olympic Games: The First Thousand Years, by MI Finley & HW Pleket
Genre: Nonfiction (ancient history)

I've been renewing my interest in classical Greek history of late, hence this book. I liked it, but it'd be a bit dry for someone just starting to explore the period. If that's you, I'd suggest The Naked Olympics if you're interested in the early Games, or Persian Fire for the Greco-Persian Wars, or Lords of the Sea for the rise and fall of Athens.

Happy New Year!

What's that you say? It's not New Year's Day on any calendar that you know of? Sure it is! It's Miss Fraser's first day of school (she's in second grade now, and I have no idea who took my adorable baby girl and replaced her with this tall, skinny, leggy, but still adorable kid). And as long as I have a kid in school and work at a university for my day job, early September is going to feel at least as much like the start of a new year as the official version in January.

I'm even doing some small, informal resolutions. We just replaced my computer that was stolen in the break-in, and now that I have a new computer and a new contract from Carina, along with a greatly improved pinched nerve, it's time to step up my writing pace accordingly. And I figure if I start back on Weight Watchers today, that gives me almost two months until the Emerald City Writers Conference, where I'll see people who last saw me at RWA in New York. Maybe that's time enough for them to say, "Wow, Susanna, have you lost weight?" And I'm not due for my annual physical till January. Surely four months of Weight Watchers, even with mini-breaks for Thanksgiving and Christmas, is time enough to move the scale a bit and make my doctor happy.

What about you? Is September a new year for you, formally or otherwise? Any fall resolutions?

Labor Day Weekend Cooking

My mother-in-law flew out from Oklahoma to visit us and see our new house for the first time, so I've been off from the day job since Thursday and don't go back till Wednesday. It's been wonderful having her here, and such a relaxing week. Usually when I use vacation time, it's to go somewhere. That won't change--I love to travel for its own sake, and I've got family to visit and conferences to go to on top of that. But I have to say, it's nice to have six full days to wake up and neither be in a hotel or spare room nor have to scramble to get myself out the door for work.

I haven't been doing much cooking, either. We've gone out--last night Mr. Fraser and I celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary at Cafe Juanita, and Miss Fraser insisted we take Grandma to Blue C Sushi, where the food comes on conveyor belts. Also, my mother-in-law made chicken fried steak, as she always does when she visits (SO delicious), and Mr. F grilled steaks one evening.

But yesterday for lunch I decided it was my turn. We had leftover mashed potatoes from the chicken fried steak dinner, so I made them into patties, dipped them in panko, and fried them over very low heat in butter. The potatoes were a little soupier than ideal for such a preparation, so they tended to break apart, but they tasted great, especially with sour cream on top (and bacon and fresh pineapple alongside). Next time I think I'll add some flour for thickening, or maybe just use less butter and milk in the mashers to begin with. I like to make them with roasted garlic, which gives them plenty of flavor even without gobs of dairy.

Then for dessert I made the S'mores Stuffed Brownies that Angela James tweeted about on Saturday. They turned out scrumptious and rich, though I think next time I'll leave out the Hershey Bar--there's plenty of chocolate from the brownie batter without it, and the Hershey Bar re-solidifies as it cools and doesn't add to the flavor and texture the way the graham cracker and marshmallows do.