v. 1, #2

Authors know more about their characters than they are able to put in their books.

Writers may put their characters through any number of trials: interviews, psychological tests, astrological profiles. We may insist they write their autobiographies, often revealing amazing and unexpected facets of their lives. We ask them what they want and why, and what's stopping them from getting it. We do this not just for our hero and heroine, but often for other characters as well, including the villain of the story.

Before we ever start to write a book, we have done a great deal of work to explore the people who move about, live, and love in those stories. We'd probably say that these characters have no secrets from us, but deep down we authors know better. Our characters will still do things we never planned. And this includes our secondary characters, not only our hero and heroine.

For an example from The Lady in Question: The heroine's father forces the hero, Lord Rayfield, into accepting a wager for the heroine, Charlotte. When Rayfield wins, the father demands that Rayfield take Charlotte away immediately, even though it's the middle of the night and she is dressed only in a thin nightgown and peignoir.

No one could have been more surprised than I when Spencer, the elderly butler, followed them out the front door and insisted he couldn't allow Charlotte to go alone! It didn't end there. Spencer adamantly maintained all the way through that he had a more important part to play in the story than the simple walk-on I envisioned when I began the book.

And that brings me back to "things we know about our characters that we don't reveal in the book." I am working on the third book in this loosely connected series, tentative title The Lady Protests. Because it takes place nearly simultaneously with the events in The Lady in Question, I can't write the news of events after the story. So instead of follow-up news, I thought I'd bring you some facts about the characters that didn't make it into the books, primarily TLIQ. However, this does give away details about the books that might spoil them for you if you haven't read them. If so, you can skip this part of the newsletter.

Character News
The Story Behind the Story

In The Lady Is Mine, Piers Luchan writes a pantomime for the entertainment of Lord Beldon's guests. There never seemed to be a good place to divulge that Piers had been supporting himself by anonymously writing several plays that were produced at London theatres. I hinted that Marianne knows, and Piers tells Harriet that he can manage for himself but doesn't have the funds to help his Scottish tenants. That's all I was able to reveal.

The Lady in Question, with its more complicated plot, had no room in the short format of a traditional Regency to tell everything I wished I could have disclosed.

It might have seemed out of character for Spencer to summon Charlotte to the Blue Ruin, the filthy, unsavory waterfront inn at which he stayed after he broke his ankle. He had been so protective of her and was the soul of honor.

So, it may help to know that the place was nowhere near as dangerous for Charlotte as she and Lord Rayfield assumed. The landlord of the inn is Spencer's brother. Spencer is ashamed of his squalid origins and doesn't reveal his lowly relation. He has worked to eliminate any trace of his lower class accent. Spencer's nephew, Jehiel Spencer, is the son of this brother, and Spencer helped him to improve himself by financing his musical education, and then securing his position with the vicar in Charlotte's home village.

Thus it was logical that Spencer turned to his innkeeper brother when he lost his employment after his injury and needed a place to stay. The situation served his purpose very well, because he wished for both Charlotte and Rayfield to believe it was dangerous for Charlotte to stay there, making them more amenable to bringing the two back together. However, when another patron of the place threatened her, the innkeeper brother defended her, and he would not have allowed any real harm to her.

One of the sayings among writers is "Villains are the heroes of their own stories." That's certainly true of Sir Percival Bagham, the villain in TLIQ. Although nothing justifies the choice a person makes to act reprehensibly, Sir Percival did have a very tragic background, which I could not show much of.

Bitterness was the Bagham family legacy. Sir Percival's father was the younger son of a wealthy baronet who owned a textile mill. Sir P's father eloped with the daughter of a worker at his father's mill, and was cast off. When he died, leaving two young children, his wife returned to her father, a stocking weaver. Sir Percival's mother and sister had to work in the mill that had belonged to his grandfather. By this time, his paternal grandfather had died and his uncle, who inherited the baronetcy and the mill, had sold the mill and moved away. Percival's mother remarried, a hard, unpleasant man. She bore two more children and died.

Percival's sister held the family together, and Percival was also forced to work in the mill. Then his baronet uncle, who was childless, showed up in his life and took him out of the poverty in which he was living, making it clear that only necessity had brought him to rescue young Percival. As the boy grew up, he knew nothing of love or any softer emotion. And when he inherited and learned that the estate was beggared by bad investments and bad management, his resentment hardened into a need to make the aristocracy pay for the sufferings he and his siblings had undergone. From there, it was merely a step to scheming to overthrow the British government.

Author News

In my last newsletter I told you that Kensington has discontinued the Regency line. That left me (and many other writers) without a place to sell traditional Regencies. I had already begun a third traditional Regency. Knowing that it would have to sell as a historical, I went "back to the drawing board." I've made changes to the background of my heroine, added characters and a mystery subplot, and have rewritten the proposal--the first chapters and synopsis for the book. It's up in the air what will become of the book, which I'm calling The Lady Protests.

Three Kensington authors: Theresa Bodwell, Leanne Shawler, Judith Laik

My next project is to edit a contemporary young adult novel I'd finished a few years ago, and start submitting that. After that--I have several other stories in mind. And I want to write the rest of The Lady Protests. No matter which project I choose, I'll be busy! In the meantime, I'm doing some much overdue cleaning of my office and work around my house and getting ready for the holidays.

I'd like to talk about what a few of my writing friends are up to. Gerri Russell is a finalist in the American Title II contest sponsored by Romantic Times Bookclub Magazine and Dorchester Publishing Company. Like American Idol, some of the finalists are eliminated in each round. You can vote by going to the Romantic Times website, where each month a different part of the contestants' books are featured, and selecting your favorite. You can find out more about Gerri and her book at her website: http://www.gerrirussell.net. The first round of voting is closed; the second chance to vote for Gerri will be between December 19-January 1. Details about the contest are at: http://www.romantictimes.com/e_news/amtitle.shtml.

Another friend, Heather Hiestand, has a story in a mystery anthology, Murder Across the Map, edited by Cindy Daniel, which debuted this month. The anthology was a project of Sisters in Crime, a worldwide organization for women writing mysteries. It's available at Amazon, though they say it will take four to six weeks to arrive. And Jacquie Rogers has two stories in another anthology, No Law Against Love, scheduled to be published in 2006. More information is on the Highland Press website, http://highlandpress.org.

There is an interview with me on the reviews website Romance Reader at Heart. Here's the link: http://romancereaderatheart.com/clues/mysteryauthors/laik/

In my last newsletter, I recommended a book. I'd like to do the same this time. I've been completely fascinated by The True Power of Water, Healing and Discovering Ourselves, by Masaru Emoto. If positive thoughts and love can make such a powerful difference to molecules of water, imagine what it can do for human beings!

Ana (Jaraluv Nirvana), Scottish Deerhound

Ana being a pretzel

Until next time, all the happiness of the season to you, and happy reading!

Judith Laik
www.JudithLaik.com