The “Brave New World” of Writing During a Worldwide Pandemic

Posted on October 29, 2021 by Sheri

Like many writers, I majored in English in college. I was that student who always asked, “Did Famous Dead Author really mean that wilting houseplant to be a symbol of death, or was that interpretation concocted by English teachers and college professors in an attempt to burnish his credentials as a Great Writer?” In other words, did the author in question think, “I believe I’ll add a dying aspidistra in the corner to give sharp-eyed readers a hint as to Nigel’s ultimate end.” Or was he merely trying to tell a good tale, and figured Nigel was just the sort of guy who would forget to water his plants? To paraphrase what Freud never actually said, sometimes a houseplant is just a houseplant.

Death Can Be Habit-Forming, John Pickett Mystery #11

Fast-forward more years than I care to count to 2020. I struggled to write during the pandemic, so much so that Death Can Be Habit-Forming, originally scheduled for March 2021, was postponed to May/June and then, when it became clear that I still wouldn’t have the book finished, to late August. Amazon is quite punitive to authors who don’t have their books uploaded by the deadline (about three days before the book’s publication date), so the pressure was on to finish with last-minute edits and submit the file. I’m pleased to say that I made the deadline—albeit by a scant two hours!

In this book, John Pickett Mystery #11, Pickett arranges to be committed to an asylum for opium-eaters in order to rescue a woman being held there against her will. He soon discovers that getting in was the easy part; getting out may prove to be another matter entirely.

As the last step before uploading the manuscript to Amazon, I used my laptop’s text-to-speech feature to listen to the entire 83,000-word manuscript over the course of three days; I’ve discovered that, since it reads back exactly what I typed, rather than what I “meant” to say, nothing works as well for catching the typos my eye tends to skim over.

But being so deeply immersed in the story over a short period of time with very few breaks, I noticed something I hadn’t before, something I hadn’t even noticed I was doing.

The pandemic, and the related lockdown, was there, permeating every line.

I knew, of course, that I’d included a reference to the recently developed smallpox inoculation. This was mostly plot-related; I’d needed a reason for John Pickett’s wife, Julia, to see something in the window of a shop in a part of London where she would not normally venture. Since the discovery and rescue of John’s previously unknown half-brother, Kit, had been the premise of the previous novel (Brother Can You Spare a Crime?, winner of the 2021 Colorado Authors League’s Award of Excellence in the Action/Adventure category), I decided she might need to consult with Kit’s dreadful mother on something. The challenge of finding a reputable school willing to take a pupil of Kit’s background is established early in the book, partly as comic relief and partly as one of the more quelling aspects of taking a child of the slums into Julia’s Mayfair household. Determining Kit’s inoculation status was a natural outgrowth of that situation.

Actually, I have no idea if the British “public schools” (ironically, what Americans would call private schools) had any policies one way or another regarding inoculation. Fortunately, since I was not using one of the existing schools such Eton or Harrow (acknowledging within the text that neither of these prestigious establishments would touch Kit Pickett with a ten-foot pole!), I could make up the rules to suit myself; such is the advantage of authorship.

“The Cow-Pock–or–the Wonderful Effects of the New Inoculation!” James Gillray, June 12, 1802

Doing a quick check on the internet to confirm my recollections of the date of the smallpox inoculation, I was reassured to find that the use of cowpox matter as a preventive against smallpox was first discovered by Edward Jenner, an English doctor, in 1796 and made available to the general public in 1798, so it suited my purposes very nicely. To my surprise, however, I learned that people then were just as wary of the inoculation as many are of the COVID vaccine today—although while the vaccine-hesitant today generally cite the haste with which it was developed and/or the lack of knowledge of any potential long-term effects, those in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries were afraid it might turn them into cows! In fact, there’s a wonderful cartoon by James Gillray from 1802 that shows a man, presumably Jenner, preparing to inoculate a nervous-looking woman with a substance labeled “Vaccine Pock hot from ye Cow,” while others, having undergone the same treatment, watch with dismay as small cows erupt from their arms, legs, and noses. A man on the far right has sprouted horns on his head, and a woman on his right appears to be pregnant. (Don’t tell me Gillray didn’t mean to imply that she was about to give birth to a calf, for I won’t believe you!)

The introduction of the smallpox inoculation into my book was a deliberate choice, albeit one that probably would not have occurred to me had the COVID vaccine not been so much in the news lately. But I hadn’t realized how closely John Pickett’s confinement reflected my own sense of isolation as the lockdown dragged on past the early talk of staying home for a few weeks in order to “flatten the curve” to a vague sense of going back to normal “someday” after a vaccine was developed.

In the book’s second act, Pickett becomes increasingly convinced that both his wife and the woman he has come to rescue are being deliberately kept from him. It’s no coincidence that I was writing those chapters just as the autumn spike in COVID cases put paid to my own hopes of being able to fly home to celebrate Christmas with my family; “Authority,” in the form of the CDC, WHO, and the ubiquitous Dr. Fauci, was conspiring to keep us apart, just as Mrs. Danvers, the sinister proprietress of the Larches, was doing to poor John Pickett.

I still don’t know the true meaning of that aspidistra wilting in the corner of Nigel’s living room, but I can testify that Death Can Be Habit-Forming reflects, and was influenced by, current events in a way none of my earlier works have been.

I only hope that we, like Pickett, will soon be set free.

[For more on writing in the midst of a pandemic, check out Bookstr’s roundtable discussion on this timely subject featuring five authors, of whom I am one: “Pandemic Writing: 5 Authors Reveal Covid’s Influence”]

Mudlarking!

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Sheri

As I mentioned in a recent post, my trip to the UK last summer was specifically to research John Pickett Mystery #9, Into Thin Eire. Still, I already knew what Book 10 would be about, and one of my experiences on this trip provided a spark for that book as well. For while I was in London, I went mudlarking!

In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, mudlarking was an early form of recycling in which people, often children (called mudlarks), scavenged along the exposed riverbank of the Thames at low tide for anything they could sell. John Pickett was an occasional mudlark in his misspent youth, so I thought it would be fun to try something that he would have done. (The other option, pickpocketing, is, alas, frowned upon.)

I went online to learn what I could about modern-day mudlarking, and discovered that, for one thing, you have to have a permit from the London Port Authority. I also learned that they don’t recommend you go by yourself. If you do, you should at least be aware at all times of the location of the nearest stairs; when the tide turns, the river rises very swiftly, and it’s possible to be cut off.

So I searched for a guide to take me out. (Another advantage of going with a guide is that he has the permit issue taken care of.) I eventually made a date with Steve Brooker (aka the “mud god”), who’s been featured on the History Channel and written up in Time magazine and elsewhere. But while searching, I came across an article on mudlarking that quoted a curator at the Museum of London as saying (I’m quoting here as nearly as I can remember), “almost everything we know about childhood in the Middle Ages comes from finds the mudlarks have brought in.” It’s often said that times may change, but human nature doesn’t. Children lose things, whether in the twelfth century or the twenty-first.

Steve Brooker, aka the “mud god,” my mudlarking guide.
The skyscrapers in the background make up the
Canary Wharf business district on the Isle of Dogs.

Still, the idea of those toys, lost somehow in or along the river only to be washed up decades or even centuries later, started me thinking. In Book 10, Brother, Can You Spare a Crime?, John Pickett discovers he has a ten-year-old half-brother. That half-brother, I knew, would have had an upbringing very similar to John’s; what if he, too, had been an occasional mudlark, and had found a toy of some kind—one not necessarily of any monetary value, but something that he, a poor child having so little, prizes? And what if he (like all those medieval children) dropped it—not in the River Thames, but at the scene of a crime? I hadn’t even gone on my own mudlarking adventure yet, but thanks to the internet, I already had a head start on my next book!

You’ll be able to see how this element fits into the book when it releases on June 12, but in the meantime, here are a few photos of my own mudlarking finds. Contrary to what you might expect, we did not use a metal detector (in fact, the “mud god” has strong views about the use of metal detectors along the foreshore, and the role they play in erosion); instead, he taught me how to read the tides as the nineteenth-century mudlarks would have done.

I met up with Steve in Greenwich at the Cutty Sark, and we walked through the tunnel beneath the Thames to the Isle of Dogs, the peninsula formed by a deep bend in the river east of the City. (Incidentally, whenever you see London referred to as the “City”—capitalized—it refers to the portion of central London, roughly one square mile, that was once contained within the old Roman wall.) Why that particular spot? Because once upon a time, the Isle of Dogs was the site of a dumping ground for one of Henry VIII’s palaces. Dead people’s garbage dumps are a historian’s playground; so much can be learned by what people threw away, either by accident or deliberately. Which makes me wonder what historians will learn about us someday, but that’s a topic for another blog, written by another blogger.

THE PHOTOS:

**My favorite out of all our haul: a Victorian penny, about the size of a US half-dollar.**
**The reverse side gives the date as 1900.**

**A clay pipe, the “cigarette butts” of their era and one of the most common of all mudlarking finds.**

George V half-penny from 1934,
just a bit larger than a US quarter.

**A “sea biscuit” fossil; some modern-day mudlarks search for them exclusively.**

**George VI half-penny from 1939. (If you’ve ever seen the film *The King’s Speech*, he was its subject**.)

**Fragments of garnet, although not gem quality. In fact, these are industrial waste; the “sand” on sandpaper is actually finely crushed garnet. All waste products should be so pretty!**

**This half-penny says “new penny” because the UK had just switched from the old pounds/shillings/pence monetary system to**
**100 pence = 1 pound. (The half-penny was not removed from circulation until 1984.**)

Dress pin from the Tudor era. (Ink pen included to show scale.) We found three pins in all, and Steve seemed surprised/disappointed that there weren’t more. Apparently they’re usually very plentiful in the area, thanks to that Tudor-era garbage dump.

**Not all of the coins we found were British. Here’s a 1 rupee coin from India, dated 1999.**

**WWII bullet & casing. We found a whole cache of these, and I told Steve, “Well, there was your problem: you were supposed to put the bullets into the guns and *then* fire them at the Germans!”**

**10-cent piece from West Germany, 1970.**

A fragment of Blue Willow china. This stuff was all over the place! Most of it was blue, but there were a few shards of rose pink, too. And I wish *so badly* that I’d snagged a whole bagful of it! I’m sure I could have found something to do with it.

**We found several pieces of petrified wood. Here are two of them.**

There was more, including modern coins from the UK as well as a US quarter, a small brass button, a number of 19th-century nails. . In fact, I haven’t yet got around to cleaning it all! We were on the foreshore for about two hours before the tide made it necessary for us to curtail our hunt. Here’s a photo of all our finds:

I can’t wait to go again! Hmm, I wonder what I’ll find next time…

Research Trip 2019: London to Holyhead to Dublin

Posted on May 17, 2020 by Sheri

The current ban on international travel makes me especially glad that I managed to visit the UK last year, although pleasure wasn’t the first thing on my mind when I made the trip. I’d been working on Into Thin Eire (aka John Pickett mystery #9), and I’d just finished the chase through England, Wales, and finally Ireland that makes up a good deal of the book. But when I read back through those chapters, I realized there was one big problem.

“This could be set anywhere in the world,” I complained to my husband, “and it wouldn’t matter! It needs detail to ground it in a particular place.” I looked online, but internet research has its limitations; I just wasn’t finding what I needed.

“Do you need to go?” my husband asked. “If you do, book a flight. I’ll see you when you get back.”

At Denver International Airport, waiting to board!

And so I did. Since my husband didn’t have enough vacation time to take a week off (we’d taken a South American cruise back in February, and he’d used most of it up on that trip), I went alone—my first solo trip out of the country. (Mom was convinced I was never coming back alive.) I’d bought a BritRail pass at the same time I’d booked my flight, and so after taking a day to recover from jet lag, I set out from my hotel to Euston Station. My objective: to follow the path of my characters, making notes on topographical changes along the way.

After boarding the train and finding a window seat with a good view, I pulled out a little notebook I’d bought for the trip. As the train traveled westward, I made notes on the landscape: the flat green fields of the Midlands, dotted with sheep and occasionally bisected by canals (the latter sometimes affording glimpses of brightly colored narrowboats) giving way to the steep slopes of Snowdonia, the peaks hidden beneath a blanket of clouds, until finally setting me down in Holyhead, Wales, where I’d booked a room for two nights at a quaint bed and breakfast called Witchingham.

Sheep seen from the window of the train.

Witchingham, the bed & breakfast where
I stayed in Holyhead, Wales.

Once in my room, I walked the short distance to the water and strolled along the Anglesey Coastal Path, stopping to eat dinner at the Yacht Club restaurant. From the water’s edge, I could see the ferries returning; this was the reason I’d come to Holyhead.

Boats near the Yacht Club.
Note the castle ruins in the background!

Early the next morning, I called for a taxi to take me to the port, and took the Swift ferry to Dublin. The name refers to Jonathan Swift, not to the boat’s speed, although that would fit, too: I made the Irish Sea crossing in just over three hours, whereas for John Pickett and his traveling companions, even a smooth crossing would have been seventeen hours or more. The boat itself was like a small cruise ship, with a buffet brunch included in the fare, along with comfortable seats and big picture windows along the bow and sides. But I wasn’t the only person making a work-related trip: one entire deck was reserved for commercial trucks (lorries), with lounges set aside specifically for their drivers.

When we arrived in Dublin, I realized that in one instance, at least, John Pickett would have had the advantage over me: his packet sailed right up the River Liffey into the heart of Dublin, whereas my ferry docked along a rather nondescript commercial waterfront, from which we walk-on passengers had to take a bus into the city proper. After a day in Dublin, it was back to the ferry for the return trip, arriving in Holyhead just after midnight. (And me, with my north-Alabama/Appalachian-foothills accent trying to communicate by telephone with a Welsh taxi driver was the only real problem I had on the whole trip!)

In the morning, I took the train back to London for my next adventure—mudlarking along the Thames foreshore! But that’s a subject for another blog . . .

Mediterranean Cruise

Posted on July 12, 2017 by Sheri

One of the questions writers hate the most is “Where do you get your ideas?” Usually, the reason we hate it is that the honest answer would be, “Duh, I don’t know.” Seriously. Out of more than twenty books, there are only three or four that I could definitely say what inspired the story.

A recent exception would be my first romantic suspense novel, Moon over the Mediterranean, which was just released. When my husband and I started planning this trip, I thought it would be nice if I could get a novel out of it. Since the setting wouldn’t really lend itself to the Regency period (because, you know, Napoleon was running amok all over Europe), I decided to try my hand at the type of book that I credit with giving me a lifelong craving for travel: a romantic suspense novel in the tradition of Mary Stewart, M. M. Kaye, etc. Since the book’s publication, several reviewers have recommended it as a summer “beach read,” largely because of its exotic setting(s). So now, I’m going to be like that annoying neighbor who invites you over and then proceeds to show you all the home movies from his vacation. Except in my case, it’s not movies, but some of the sights we saw on our trip, which also figure in the novel.

Hubby Mike and me on Formal Night. (No, I’m not that short; he, at 6’5″, is that tall.)

Since I’m a firm believer in not talking down to readers, I’m not going to tell you what this is. I’m sure you’re smart enough to figure it out.

Me, standing in front of the Spanish Steps in Rome. The two-toned cream-colored house in the right middle ground is the Keats-Shelley House, where the poet John Keats died in 1821. It’s now a museum dedicated to the English Romantic poets.

Stunning view along the hair-raising road from Naples to Sorrento.

Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar. In the book, Robin has a fright here; while I wasn’t assaulted, like she was, I did find the too-aggressive salesmen too much of a deterrent to do any shopping.

The windmills of Mykonos, Greece.

The section of Mykonos known as “Little Venice,” because of the way the balconies hang out over the water. One of the “mushier” scenes in the book takes place here.

Street scene in Ephesus, Turkey. The large building on the left is (or was) the Celsus Library.

The Parthenon, Athens.

The Erechtheion, with the “Porch of the Maidens.” It’slocated on the Acropolis, like the Parthenon, which is only a stone’s throw away. (No pun intended.)

A close-up of the Porch of the Maidens.

The Doge’s Palace in Venice, as seen from the balcony of our stateroom.

The Bridge of Sighs in Venice, with the Doge’s Palace on the left and the prison on the right. The “sighs” were from prisoners glimpsing the outside world for the last time as they crossed the bridge.

USA Today HEA interview

Posted on January 31, 2017 by Sheri

In spring of 2016, I had the good fortune to be featured on USA Today’s HEA blog in an article on historical mystery series with strong romantic elements! Since there were eight authors referenced in the article, everyone’s interview had to be abbreviated due to space constraints. I’ve included my entire interview below; if you’d like to read the HEA blog entry (I’ve been told it was one of the most popular they’ve ever done, and was shared more than 1,400 times!), you can read it here

1) Did you plan from the start to include the romantic element in your book or series, or did it evolve in the writing of the stories? If the former, why? If the latter, at what point did you realize this element would be significant to the book/series?
Yes, the romance was a big part of the series from the very beginning. I’d had success with “across the tracks” romance in my self-published Regency romance The Weaver Takes a Wife, so when I got ready to develop a mystery series, I decided to go back to that particular well, in this case pairing a young and inexperienced (in more ways than one) Bow Street Runner with the widowed viscountess who is his chief suspect in the murder of her husband (Book 1, In Milady’s Chamber). I knew from the first that I was asking readers to suspend a great deal of disbelief in accepting that a Bow Street Runner, even a young and handsome one, might become romantically involved with an aristocratic lady. In fact, I felt this scenario was well-suited for a series, as it would allow for the gradual development of a relationship that might be difficult to pull off in a single title.

2) Does the romantic element develop over several books or is it strong from the start?
It seems a bit sacrilegious to mention my own books in the same sentence as Dorothy L. Sayers, but at the risk of sounding presumptuous, the relationship between Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane was my model, as far as developing the romance goes. In the first book, the attraction is all on John Pickett’s side. Julia, Lady Fieldhurst is far more concerned with saving her neck from the gallows, but even aside from that, a woman of her class would never think of a man of his station in those terms. It was interesting to see reviewers’ response to this one-sided attachment. One reviewer said, “If you’re looking for a romance, you won’t find it here,” while another said, “The romantic tension crackles, because absolutely nothing happens”!

3) What is the relationship between the protagonist and the significant other, and the role of the significant other in the story? (Are they partner sleuths, or is the “other”, while involved in the story, not one of the primary investigators? If you are writing a series, does your protagonist have only one significant other, or are there a series of them?)
In the first book, he was investigating her husband’s murder, and she was the primary suspect. In the later books, they keep running into each other—sometimes coincidentally, other times not. Because of her social position, she can go places that he can’t, and ferret out information from people who might refuse to talk to him. The most recent book, Dinner Most Deadly, found them at cross purposes for the first time, with Julia reluctantly agreeing to protect her best friend’s estranged husband, who is a suspect in the case Pickett is investigating. And it makes her miserable, which goes a long way toward making her realize just how important he has become in her life.

4) If you are writing/have written a series, how is the romantic element maintained after the couple marry or otherwise have a meeting of the minds on their relationship?
I don’t want to give away too much detail here, because the book that resolves the relationship has not yet been published. Suffice it to say that I’d expected the series to end once that resolution came, but after writing that book, I realized that the daily challenges of making such an unequal match work offered plenty of opportunity for conflict—and comedy—that deserved to be explored.

5) Do you think the romantic element is important to the marketing of your books? Is it featured, by either you or your publisher, in the marketing materials? If not, do you know why?
I think it’s very important—in fact, I doubt if there’s a single person who reads my books strictly for the mystery! While my publisher markets the John Pickett series as part of its mystery line, I write my own copy for the cover flap, and I make sure to mention the issues within the developing relationship as well as the mystery. I also promote it on romance review websites, and next month I’ll be attending the Romantic Times conference for the first time.

6) There are historical romances with strong suspense of mystery plots. How are those different from the books that you write?
The most obvious difference is the fact that my series follows the same couple over a number of books—and that, four books into the series, the romance is still unresolved and unconsummated. I also think my books contain more humor than the historical romances with mystery or suspense elements, which seem to deal with darker themes and/or tortured characters. I don’t do tortured characters; John Pickett is rather like a Regency “Chuck” (from the titular character of the TV series, portrayed by Zachary Levi) in that he’s brilliant but utterly lacking in self-confidence.

I hate blogging!

Posted on May 26, 2015 by Sheri

I have a confession to make. I hate blogging. (You’d probably already figured that out, given that my blog hasn’t been updated since last July.) But blogging seems to be expected of writers these days, along with a lot of other things that didn’t even exist back when my first novel, Wrong-Way Romance, was published in 1991. But while I don’t mind Facebook, for instance—in fact, it’s fun to share book covers, reviews, etc. with readers—I begrudge every minute I spend writing blog entries, including this one. For one thing, I don’t think my life is so thrilling that people would want to read about it every week. (I’m reminded of the cell phone commercial from years ago, in which a man “tweets” such thrilling tidbits as “I’m sitting on the porch,” much to the chagrin of his mortified teenaged children.)

More than that, though, if I’m writing, I want to be WRITING. There are only so many hours a day that I can devote to it, and I’d much rather spend those hours writing a book than a blog. In other words, I’d rather be living the writing life than waxing philosophical about it.

In fact, lately I’ve been so consumed with my characters that when I’m not writing about them, I’ve started drawing them. I haven’t done any freehand sketching in years, but for some reason I decided to give it a whirl. I used to draw a lot when I was younger, but to my frustration, I couldn’t draw anything realistically; everything I drew had a cartoony look to it. With the rise of manga, however, I decided that cartooniness might actually be a good thing. And so I drew this sketch of John Pickett and his Lady Fieldhurst, from the mystery series.

And it was FUN! So much fun, in fact, that I drew another, this one considerably . . . warmer. (When I texted it to my younger sister, she promptly texted back, “Oh, get a room!”)

So, I’ve fulfilled my writerly duty and updated my blog. Now it’s your turn: do you blog? If so, what do you find to write about? Do you read blogs? Obviously you’re reading this one, but why? What do you think of authors on social media—do you enjoy getting an inside look at what their lives are like, or would you rather they spent that time working on their next book? Do my sketches look anything like you imagined John Pickett and Lady Fieldhurst, or do you think I should put the colored pencils down and stick to writing? Inquiring minds want to know!

Living in the Shadow of WRONG-WAY ROMANCE

Posted on June 18, 2014 by Sheri

As I write these words, I’m packing my bags (okay, I ought to be packing my bags) for a trip to Denver for RomCon, a 3-day conference for readers and fans of romance. Although I’ve been to writers’ conferences galore, this is my first experience with a fan-centric function. I’m not quite sure what to expect, but I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if, at some point during the weekend, someone comes up to me and says, “I know who you are! You wrote Wrong-Way Romance!”

And they would be right. Way back in 1990, I sold my first novel, and a year later, in February 1991, Wrong-Way Romance was published by Bantam Books as part of its popular teen romance series, Sweet Dreams.

I went on the write four more Sweet Dreams titles—which have since then been translated into Polish, Chinese, Dutch, and French—but that first novel must have struck a chord that none of the others were able to match. If you look them up on Amazon or Bookfinder.com, you’ll find that used copies of most of them can be had for mere pennies—except for Wrong-Way Romance, which as of this writing can’t be found for less than $270. Yep, a 136-page paperback that originally sold for $2.95 is now listed for almost 100 times that amount–an increase of over 9000%. Not only that, but scarcely a month goes by that I don’t get an email from someone in their 30s who remembers reading that book as a teenager, and wonders if I have old copies to sell. (The answer is “no”; this was, after all, my first novel, and I didn’t know that I should buy up as many copies with my author discount as I could afford. Then again, who knew that it would be commanding those prices more than twenty years later?)

But wait; there’s more. I’ve been to more than one writer’s conference where another attendee, upon seeing my name badge, exclaimed, “You’re the one who wrote Wrong-Way Romance! That’s the book that made me want to read, and then write, romance!” At the close of the 2012 conference of Romance Writer’s of America, I met a finalist in the Golden Heart Awards for Best Young Adult Novel on the van taking a load of conference attendees back to the Los Angeles airport. When she learned who I was, she told me that was the book that led her to write for teenagers. After she got off the van, another woman told me, “That gave me goosebumps!”

It gives me goosebumps, too. And yet . . . sometimes it’s frustrating, living in the shadow of my first published novel. Some part of me wants to say, “Have you tried reading what I’m writing now?”

Don’t get me wrong. I am genuinely humbled to think that something I wrote more than twenty years ago is still being read, much less influencing people’s lives, today. It’s the sort of thing most of us as writers dream of.

But at the same time, I would hate to think that I peaked with my very first novel, and that it’s all downhill from there. I know that my writing is more finely crafted today than it was then, and my current novels, set in Regency England, are much more demanding, as they require more research and are over 2½ times as long in terms of word count.

I suspect part of the problem, if it can be called a problem, is simply the fact that Wrong-way Romance was a book written for, and read by, 12- to 14-year-olds—in other words, readers at an age where their tastes, preferences, and life goals are still being formed. I can still remember quite plainly books that made an impact on me at that age—or even younger—and my discovery of Georgette Heyer at age sixteen was certainly a watershed moment. But although I’ve discovered authors as an adult that I read (and re-read) faithfully, I can’t think of any who have had a truly life-changing impact on me. This is not to say anything against those writers; it’s simply that I have more of a backstory of my own, so to speak, and each individual book I read is a smaller percentage of the whole than it would have been when I was, say, thirteen years old, reading voraciously for a glimpse of what life “ought” to be like.

And, in all fairness, I’m not the same person I was twenty-five years ago, when I wrote Wrong-Way Romance. Ironically, I quit writing for teenagers about the same time my daughter and her friends began reading in the genre; suddenly I was looking at those high school years as someone’s mother, instead of writing from the perspective of the insecure teenager I once was. Maybe that’s why most successful young adult authors are still young themselves.

And so I’ll keep plugging away at Regency England, aware that lightning of the sort that was Wrong-Way Romance probably won’t strike twice. In the meantime, Ethan Brundy of The Weaver Takes a Wife has a devoted contingent of fans, and John Pickett of the mystery series got me noticed by both Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews.

And maybe that, added to the early success of Wrong-Way Romance, is all any writer has any right to hope for.

When fan mail . . . isn’t.

Posted on May 16, 2014 by Sheri

Looking back, I should have known what was coming when I saw the subject heading “Incorrect Word” in my email inbox. But like a fool, I opened it anyway. This is what I saw, reproduced here exactly as it appeared on my computer, complete with lack of salutation:

“On page 11 of ‘A Dead Bore’ the correct word should be eminently in the sentence: ‘Although imminently suitable, …’.

”Also, in the same sentence you wrote ‘…was so daunting …’ As daunting means intimidating, why would Lady Fieldhurst accept the invitation that very day? Wouldn’t she hesitate to accept if she was intimidated?

“I gave up reading at this point.”

I have to admit, the writer (I can hardly call him a “fan,” except, perhaps, in the worst sense of “fanatic,” and given that he quit reading on page 11, “reader” would hardly seem to fit, either) is correct in the first instance. The “eminent/imminent” distinction is one of those subtleties of language that I have to be constantly aware of, and in this case it managed to slip by not only me, but my critique partner and my editor at Five Star as well.

In the second example, however—and I admit to going back to look, secure in my understanding of the word “daunting”—he completely misread the sentence. Apparently he was so offended by the “eminent/imminent” issue that his reading comprehension skills were affected. Poor guy.

Now, I’ll admit, I hate it when I make this sort of error—most every writer I know does—but these things happen, and will happen as long as writers are human. That same typo (or “mindo” in this case, as it was my mind taking a brief hiatus, not my fingers hitting a wrong key, that was responsible) that jumps out at a reader is surprisingly difficult to spot when the words are my own. I knew what I “meant” to say, and that’s what I read. Every writer I know has this same dilemma.

Don’t get me wrong. Every reader has the right to put aside a book that isn’t working for them. I’m sure we’ve all done it; I know I have. And everyone has their hot buttons, things are deal breakers when it comes to finishing a book or not. Maybe it’s because I was the target here, but I thought this one gaffe was pretty small, compared to some I’ve seen. Ironically, just before I received this email I’d finished a book in which the author cited “The Lady or the Tiger?” a full eighty years before the short story of that name was published. While it did pull me briefly out of the story, I didn’t throw the book down in disgust. In fact, I kept on reading, and would have cheated myself out of a very enjoyable read if I had done otherwise. While as for contacting the author to point out her error and inform her that I was casting the book aside, and why—well, such a thing would never cross my mind. Who does that, anyway?

Seriously, I’d really like to know. What did the writer of the email hope to accomplish? Given that the edition he was reading was published in 2008, there was nothing I could do about it at this late date. (I might also add that this book earned me my first-ever review in Publishers Weekly, who called it “delightful,” so apparently it had some redeeming qualities.) What did the writer get out of this, except perhaps a brief feeling of superiority? Perhaps more important to me personally was the question: what was I to do about it? How should I respond?

I wrestled with that one all afternoon. Maybe I could send a very polite and charming email, acknowledging my own error in the first instance, and pointing out his in the second. Then I could offer an exchange: if he would give the book another try, I would promise to be more careful with my eminent/imminents in the future. But no, polite and charming or not, wasn’t my real goal to say “I’m right and you’re wrong?” Wasn’t that exactly what he’d done to me? And, that being the case, would I really change his mind, even if he agreed to such a bargain? Or would he be that much more determined to catch me in some new error?

So what did I do? Nothing. I decided not to engage with him in any way. Was it satisfying? Of course not. Part of me still wants to point out his error, as a gentle reminder to “let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” But unsatisfying as it is, I know silence is not only the best policy, but the only real option. I’ll have to be content with imagining his frustration as he wonders if I’ve received his email yet, or if its arrival is still imminent. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.) Better yet, I can stay busy preparing for the release of the next book in the series, coming out in November.

Because as they say, success is the best revenge.

On Discipline and Inspiration

Posted on February 13, 2014 by Sheri

I have a confession to make: I’ve never been a very disciplined writer. After all, I’m an Artist. As everyone knows, Artists work when—and only when—they are inspired by their muse. And if my muse decides to take a pet and not show up for a few days—or weeks, or months—well, that’s not my fault, is it? My muse will return when it’s Time.

All that changed when I had coffee with Connie Willis, winner of multiple Hugo awards and perhaps the premier science fiction writer in the country. My daughter is a major Connie Willis fan girl, so shortly after moving to Colorado, I contacted Connie Willis and asked if she would be willing to autograph a book for my daughter’s birthday. She agreed, and we met at a Starbucks in Greeley, where she is apparently a regular fixture.

We talked for an hour, and during the course of our conversation, she told me she does all her writing at Starbucks; when she tries to write at home, she said, she looks around the house and sees all the other things she “ought” to be doing instead.

Hmm, I thought, that sounds familiar. So the next morning, I took my laptop and went to Starbucks (not the same one; I don’t stalk Connie Willis). I discovered that the internet connection there, while okay for the occasional bit of research, is too slow for efficiently posting status updates to Facebook, reading and replying to email, playing Candy Crush, and all the other things that tend to distract me when I’m on the computer. By the time I left Starbucks an hour later, I’d written a thousand words—and all without a peep from that fickle muse.

Since that first visit to Starbucks, I’ve written three novels of 65,000 words each, sold two of them, and started a fourth, which at the time of this writing is about 20% complete.

Thanks, Connie. I needed that.

The Rape of the Lock, Part Deux

Posted on June 18, 2013 by Sheri

When I was finishing up my English degree at the University of South Alabama, I took a class in 17th and 18th century English literature. One of the things we had to read for that class was Alexander Pope’s mock-epic poem, THE RAPE OF THE LOCK. I found it absolutely charming! For those unfamiliar with the poem, the “rape” in question is the unauthorized cutting of a lock of the fair Belinda’s hair by the Baron, without the lady’s knowledge or permission, while her attention is engaged in playing cards. Believe it or not, it was based on an actual event, which apparently caused quite a rift between the families of the lady and gentleman involved! Pope was requested to write the poem as a way of telling the parties to “get over it, already.” Anyway, the class was instructed to write a paper on the poem. We could choose our own topic, as long as we cleared it with the professor beforehand. So after class, I approached Dr. Patricia Stevens and said, “I want to write a sequel!” She asked for clarification, and I promised her a sequel written in iambic pentameter with rhymed couplets, just like the original. She gave me her permission, and soon returned the paper to me with the following comments: “This is excellent, Sheri. You’ve captured both the style and the spirit of the poem. A+.” More than that, she made a copy of my poem and kept it on her bulletin board for years afterwards.

Since many of my readers are history/literature buffs, I thought you might like to read it as well. You may share it if you wish, as long as you give me (and Pope!) author credit, as below.

THE RAPE OF THE LOCK, Part Deux
by Sheri Cobb South
(with apologies to Alexander Pope)

Since Pope did on the fair Belinda dwell,
And offered not the Baron’s side to tell,
I here allow the Rapist equal chance
To speak his case and plead his own defense.
“My lady, he begins, “I must object,
My character and honor here protect.
It seems to me appropriate to claim
That I a victim more than villain am.”
“A victim? You?” outraged Belinda cries,
“You ought to blush with shame to tell such lies!
Behold, where once two sable locks were worn,
My neck, now bare: both of its ringlets shorn.
The first was cut by your deceitful hand;
Its twin, alas, cut at my own command.
Now, having seen my poor, ravaged locks,
Can you deny your guilt, oh cunning fox?”
“I don’t deny,” said he. “I must confess
‘Twas my own hand that stole the shining tress.
But, fair nymph, if malice here there be,
‘Twas but to avenge that which you stole from me.”
“What stole I e’er from you?” the nymph shot back,
“Save but a game of cards of red and black?”
With forcefulness that made Belinda start,
The Baron cried, “Fair maid, you stole my heart!
Come, my lady, come, let us be fair:
You have my heart, so why not I your hair?
Yet now I find (though much to my disgrace)
A thousand locks cannot one heart replace.
Though I the lock have claimed, my heart’s yours still,
And though hairs grow again, hearts never will.”
The Baron wooed Belinda with such charms,
At last she smiled, and laid aside her arms.
“Dear sir,” she said, “if you had asked of me,
I might have given the lock most willingly.”
“Alas, ’tis now too late,” the Baron said,
“But might I hope to have your hand instead?”
Belinda offers him her fingertips;
The grateful Baron lifts them to his lips.
For thus it is with lovers the world around:
For each thing lost, a better thing is found.
If one should lose, they never lose alone;
But when one wins, then both the vict’ry own.”