The Wild Blog in the West

I gave my novel draft over to be critiqued by a professional editor, as I said I would do i n my last update .  While she had a lot of positive things to say about the story and characters, she had one major criticism: she did not like my female protagonist. I've gone into my novel and its characters in previous posts .  Suffice it to say, my character, Isabella, has a lot of issues.  She is young, angry, scared, and overwhelmed.  She responds by lashing out at those who don't deserve it, with some pretty terrible consequences.  As a result, she bears a life-long scar.  Though she reforms, by the end of the novel, her reformation is not complete.  And, to be perfectly honest, it will probably never be. Isabella is not my first "challenging" female protagonist.  For a pilot script I wrote some years ago, my female protagonist was also angry.  She had just lost her job and ended a relationship.  She finally bonded with her teenage niece, only to learn that that n

I feel as though I've been living in a cave.  Sarah Waters has been publishing neo-Victorian and early/mid 20th century novels since 1998, yet I learned about her only a year ago.  More is the pity, because her writing style is so compulsively readable, at least going by her third novel,  Fingersmith  (2002). As with Crimson Petal and the White  and The Seance , I read with one eye toward seeing (1) what aspects of the Victorian Era were incorporated, (2) what "modern" elements were added, (3) what worked and did not work, (4) how well Fingersmith  conformed to expectations of "what would sell," and (5) whether it was a good story. Starting with No. 2, one common aspect of Sarah Waters's novels is that their protagonists are lesbians.  Not all, but at least the first three, including  Fingersmith .  Waters was working toward a PhD at Queen Mary, University of London, with a thesis focused on "lesbian and gay historical fictions, 1870 to the presen

As I stated in my The Crimson Petal and the White review , I will be reviewing neo-Victorian novels that were written within the past 10 to 15 years.  I am interested in learning: (1) what aspects of the Victorian Era they incorporate; (2) what "modern" elements they bring; (3) what works and does not work; (4) how well they conform to expectations of "what will sell"; and (5) whether it's a good story. John Harwood's The Seance  (2008) was never a big best seller like The Crimson Petal and the White , but it was well received.  It is quiet in all of the ways that  Crimson is flashy, never trying to be about a big idea or a shocking premise.  Yet it still manages to be bittersweet and effective. The Seance is characterized as a "horror" novel, but I never read it as such.  Instead, I saw it as a novel interested in the supernatural, and in certain fads of that time period.  It uses that angle to explore the hopes and fears of the main charact

Jane Austen was born in 1775 and died in 1817.  Most of her work was published between 1811 and 1818.  Yet she is repeatedly lumped together with authors from a much later time, such as George Eliot (1819-1880), Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865), and Anthony Trollope (1815-1882).  Together, they and many others are referred to as "Victorian authors," even though Queen Victoria didn't come to the throne until 1837. The reason seems to be because these authors, and more, frequently set their works in the English countryside, where towns were small, life was slow, and old landed wealth reigned supreme.  Of course Victorian authors covered much more than that, as anyone who has read Charles Dickens would know.  And while the countryside did, in many ways, seem suspended in time throughout the 19th century (something I comment on in a Downton Abbey  post ), it still experienced fundamental changes.  Changes that were beginning during Austen's lifetime, but would be more fu

This will shock you: when I sat down to write my neo-Victorian novel , I was not exactly aware of the current market for my genre.  I simply reasoned that if people still liked books written 150 years ago, they would be just as happy to read a more modern take. Turns out that knowing your market is pretty important.  One reason is because when you write a query letter, it is often ideal to suggest that your book resembles Book X, which was written in the past 10 to 15 years and sold bazillions of copies.  I did some Google searches, but the neo-Victorian market was surprisingly sparse -- most well-known books like The French Lieutenant's Woman  had been written decades ago. So I went onto Victorian listserv and asked for some examples of popular recent Victorian novels.  One of the examples mentioned was Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White  (2002).  Since that seems to be the most popular recent example, that is where I will start. My purpose in reviewing bo

In my last novel update , where I gave an overview of the genre (neo-Victorian historical fiction) and plot, I also briefly discussed my plans for selling Rage and Regret . The past month or so, I have been signing up for all sorts of "how to sell your novel to agents" events.  Two involved listening to an agent's webinar and getting feedback on the query letter and opening pages.  One involved attending a local pitch fest and getting to talk to some agents and editors in person. All were informative and gave me a much better sense of what agents want, and the market, below. Pitch Fest Not wanting to spend $500 or more on a writers' conference, I was pleased to learn that for a much more reasonable price, I could attend a smaller pitch fest sponsored by a local women writers group .  Be in a room with real-live agenty people who could give me more specific feedback than "It just didn't grab me"?  Where do I sign up?! So I got up on a rainy S

I figured it was time to give an update on my novel.  For those who aren't interested, at least be glad I'm done recapping Downton Abbey  and will be turning my attention to other fare in the coming weeks... Long-time readers are aware that I've written a neo-Victorian novel set in 1860s England.  I've posted snippets of it here , here , and here .  It began life at nearly 175,000 words, but has since been shaved down to around 141,000, and I don't intend for it to be any smaller [Update: Except now it's 120,000] . I officially finished it last January, but spent some time reading and rereading, correcting errors from historical to grammatical.  I even gave it *dramatic pause* a name:  Rage and Regret . Yet despite my work being ready to hit the marketplace, I realized I was completely ignorant about how to sell.  That turned out to be a big deal because agents are inundated with queries every single day and you need to present yours just right  to get

The last two segments of my novel are here and here . All three segments are in sequential order, but not back-to-back.  Given how long it will likely be before my novel is published, I'm afraid that if I release it chapter-by-chapter, the whole friggin' novel will be on the Internet before it sees print.  So my goal is to release samplers here and there that hopefully generate interest.   If you have feedback, you know the drill.  Also, for some reason, the formatting came out double-spaced this time, despite my efforts to make it like the other segments.  Enjoy!    ********************** Arthur rushed outside toward the commotion.  It came from a side street, but was spilling onto the high street, slowing traffic.  Arthur hoped that he was wrong, that it was something else.  Maybe some Strand workers had got into a brawl.  As he grew closer, he heard jeers.  “Where do you think you’re going, murderer?  Stay right where we can see you!”  Arthur felt a s