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Twitter is so convenient. It’s a lot more fun and addictive than blogging, so come on over and follow me to keep track of what I’m doing: http://twitter.com/evangelineh

Neglectful

As you can see, I’ve abandoned most of my blogs. My brain just won’t work anymore between education and personal writing, and I have nothing left for the internet.

-.-

Eating My Hat

So, I’m writing a shitty first draft.

You know how that goes.

The Brighter Side of Things

Everyone has grown very subdued since the big publishing shake up known collequially as “Black Wednesday.” Since then, more publishers have laid off employees, and rumors abound of one-book contracts and low advances to staunch the hemorrage of money the industry has lost. Agents have acknowledged the reality of this situation as well,sharing information they’ve discussed with one another and with editors. However, everyone has neglected to remind writers that acquisitions must continue if we expect to see new releases for the upcoming years.

Writers are pretty anxious right now about their chances of selling to NY since hearing that the industry is tightening its belt. But the 800 lb gorilla skulking in the corners is that LITERARY AGENTS can’t afford to close their lists. Now, they may be more discriminating in who they acquire, but their entire livelihood depends upon their clients. There’s no guarantee that all clients Agent X has sold to NY will be in circulation within the next two or three years, so it behooves them to keep a healthy list of authors to mitigate the natural cycle of an author’s lifespan.

I’m being blunt here, but this is a time for hard, cold truths.

Author A who sold well in 2007, has a chance of falling into difficulties in 2009 or 2010. Particularly if bookstores like Borders close, and places like Wal-Mart and Target decrease the numbers of books they decide to sell (and if you take a gander at your local W-M, chances are, their romance selections have shrunk to best-sellers and high mid-listers. And following the trend, my local W-M’s have expanded their YA and SF/F sections). I say this possibility calls for more action from romance writers, but I digress from this topic.

For the present, unless the entire publishing industry collapses in ruins within the next year or whatever, the best thing an author can to is to write, and to continue to submit to agents and editors. It’s not guaranteed that you’ll sell, but the industry can’t survive if they don’t have books to publish.

The Trouble With Web Design

I’m no expert, having touched Photoshop for the last about five years ago, and becoming acquainted with–and then losing interest in–php when it began to supersede regular old HTML, but after dealing with a nightmare designer, I decided it would be safer to tackle the project myself. So I have my trusty Photoshop. My PHP Designer. My Illustrator. My Notepad.

Google turns up a mine of information, from tutorials to wordpress themes available for free. I settled on one theme and for the last two days, have been tinkering with it. I wasn’t sure about the color scheme or the graphics, but I took a brief look at the scores of pictures culled from the internet and found a sharp J.C. Leydendecker illustration. It was pretty easy, and while it’s far from perfect, here’s my first attempt at creating a layout for Edwardian Promenade:

I feel quite proud of myself at the moment. However, I’m still trying to make heads and tails of tinkering with php, and what to create to make the theme show up on the website! More details to come…

2009 Goals

They exist. Stay tuned.

Indie Publishing is for Me

Ever since becoming acquainted with Zoe Winters, I’ve danced around the whole indie-publishing thing. I supported it. I promoted it. I talked it up whenever I could. Yet, I didn’t place it as a priority in my writing goals, or saw it as a viable path for my personal writing career.

All that changed, however, when I sat down at my laptop and began to rewrite an old novella plot I’d started and mucked up last year because of my latent neuroses.

Let me back up a bit.

I’ve settled with the knowledge that I write historical romances whose emphasis is on the history more so than creating typical romance protagonists who fall in love in a semi-accurate manner. As much as I enjoy historical romances who are more romantic and funny than historically accurate, I can’t do it. I also can’t focus solely on the romance between my hero and heroine–the backdrop must be fully vivid and inexpressibly entwined with the romantic plot. A few years ago, I wondered why there wasn’t a sort of “bridge” genre–you know, historical historical romances that would satisfy romance readers wanting more history in their historicals, as well as historical fiction fans who couldn’t get past both the clinch covers nor the lack of emphasis on historical background. Or better yet, a branch of historical romance that mixed todays sensibilities with yesterdays lush, sweeping historicals a la the early years of favorite authors Jane Feather, Betina Krahn, Susan Johnson, Laura Kinsale, Judith Ivory, et al (all of whom, incidentally, wrote historicals in a variety of settings viewed with horror by NY of to-day).

But I was still pursuing NY, and driving myself crazy trying to scale back the scope of my books and characters to fit what was on the market. I say…this lasted until, um, just recently. *g*

So, when I finally unsnarled the tangled ends of the novella (I tend to overthink my romantic suspense plots, and end up stuffing it with too much), and sat down to write, I realized: I could do this. Not just write a novella, but publish it myself.

All of the sudden, a weight lifted off my shoulders. A significant reason why I could never sit down and complete a manuscript was because of the constant worry that it was the ‘wrong’ one to write, that I would be wasting my time writing a MS that would prove ‘unmarketable.’ There was also the aggravation that when I sold to NY, there was no guarantee that any or all of the ideas circulating through my head, filling notebooks, and laying partially completed on my hard drive would never see the light of day because they were ‘unmarketable.’

That notion suddenly irritated the hell out of me: good stories would be rejected because certain elements would be considered a ‘hard sell’ to booksellers (imagine my eyebrow shooting way up when the husband-wife team writing under the name Anthea Lawson said Wal-Mart didn’t stock their debut because it was set in Tunisia, and their next book wouldn’t mention the setting at all to give it a better chance of being stocked in Wally World). By publishing my books myself, the only thing I need to worry about (the writing side, at least), is to create deadlines for myself and meet them. An added bonus is that my ability to set my own publishing schedule lessens the stress of writing for other’s deadlines while going to school. Lastly, doing this, not even worrying about ‘making money’(i.e. looking out for that big advance, blah blah blah) has made me remember how much fun writing is. I’d long ago lost that feeling  as I stumbled and tottered down the path everyone said was legitimate.

Besides, now no one can tell me where I’m supposed to be shelved–ha ha!

Merry Christmas

The Americanization of the Historical

I occasionally pop into ex-pat forums (Brits who come to America) because I like to read about their culture shock when moving/visiting the United States. Reading their outrage and/or surprise and shock over certain things in American culture has made me laugh, and realize how ridiculous we can be, but it’s also given me an appreciation for being American. And honestly, it’s made me proud. I’ve never felt “proud” of being American–not because of the legacy of slavery and racism, but because I’ve never had the opportunity of looking at myself from the outside.

Being an American and living in America, things we do here are second-nature: driving around an entire parking lot to find a spot close to the door; obsessing over a green, lush yard; having four-way stop instead of a roundabout; and so on. The same goes for our “short” history. Since reading their experiences, I’ve become more aware of what it means to be “American”–those basic things of everyday living that is inherently “US.” In the process, I’ve become a bit fatigued with Great Britain and Europe in general. Oh, I won’t abandon those settings, because I have really great ideas within them, but I’m more and more inclined to produce stories with US settings rather than the UK.

I frequently bemoan our lack of BBC-type dramas, since we don’t have a Jane Austen or a Charles Dickens or an Anthony Trollope, that if only we had decent romantic drama mini-series (non-Westerns!), more romance readers would fall in love with the society of 19th century New York, or Philadelphia, or DC, or Chicago. Then I realized that I didn’t need to wait around, kicking up my heels, for someone else to do so: I could do it. Further compounding my decision was when I was looking for a decent-paying position suitable for an anthropologist; I stumbled upon the National Park Service, and realized that wow–we have a ton of historical mansions just as good as those stately manors in England! I was instantly revitalized by this knowledge, and inspired by the resources at my fingertips.

Here I was, casting yearning eyes at flights to the UK, photographs of stately manors, and distraught over the costs of traveling abroad for research, when lo and behold, I can hop on a domestic flight and take tours through the stately manors of Newport, those lining the Hudson River, and those in Upstate New York–to name a few places (I grew up near D.C., so it’s pretty old-hat for me). And not only houses and buildings, but the larger-than-life people who dotted American history: Alva Belmont! Booker T. Washington! Theodore Roosevelt! And most importantly, I can’t be accused of “Americanisms” in American-set historicals, and the behavior of my characters can be a lot looser and freer than that of the British.

But the biggest inspiration for American-set historicals has to be the zillions of classic Hollywood movies I’ve been watching, almost exclusively, for the past year. The scores of great plots and characters are so inherently “American” that when a particular one inspires me, it just doesn’t fit in Edwardian Europe. It’s also a heck of a lot easier to make my American characters travel to Europe (and in the process, exist outside of European cultural norms), than to have European characters come to America (unless it’s some nefarious nobleman plotting to capture an innocent American heiress). So I, very excitedly, am throwing my gauntlet into the “American Historical” pot.

20 Actresses

From a meme going around the web: My top 20 favorite actresses. Of course, glancing at my list of classic movies watched, you can pretty much guess their order. *g*

1. Jean Arthur

2. Barbara Stanwyck

3. Ginger Rogers

4. Carole Lombard

5. Myrna Loy

6. Irene Dunne

7. Ingrid Bergman

8. Jean Harlow

9. Mary Astor

10. Claudette Colbert

11. Rosalind Russell

12. Vivien Leigh

13. Katharine Hepburn

14. Joan Fontaine

15. Greer Garson

16. Kay Francis

17. Miriam Hopkins

18. Audrey Hepburn

19. Jane Russell

20. Kim Novak