New Year, New Book

Willem, The Important Response

Happy New Year!

That’s a bit late, and so, by way of explanation, let me begin with P.G. Wodehouse’s Cocktail Time.
Told he must write another book, to build on the phenomenal success of his first, Sir Raymond (aka “Beefy”) Bastable responds,

“But I can’t, I tell you! It nearly killed me, writing Cocktail Time. You haven’t any conception what it means to sweat your way through one of these damned books. I daresay it’s all right for fellows who are used to it, but for somebody like myself…I’d much rather be torn to pieces with red-hot pincers.”

I’m here to tell you that even some of us who are used to it fully understand Beefy’s sentiments, although we may not be quite ready to be torn to pieces with red-hot pincers.

In short, as Wodehouse points out earlier in the book, “there is a lot more to this writing business than the casual observer would suppose.” I was comforted to learn that even he, who not only wrote hundreds of books but also screenplays, songs, magazine articles, short stories, and so on, at the rate of what seems to be 200 a day, did not write as effortlessly as his works would make it appear.

All of this is an overlong prelude to the question: When is the next book coming out?

Not being nearly as prolific as he was despite the difficulties he speaks of so poignantly, I am in the last stages of the Work-In-(snail-like) Progress. If I finish it within the next few weeks, it will be out in November of this year. I seem to have a prayer of accomplishing this. Please send as much positive thinking my way as you can. I am not ashamed to ask.

Images, from top: The Important Response, Florent Joseph Marie Willems, courtesy the Walters Art Museum; cover of Cocktail Time (scanned from my copy); telegram from Dorothy Parker to her editor, courtesy Letters of Note (with thanks to Susan Holloway Scott/Isabella Bradford, who first forwarded the telegram image to me).

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Lady Clara's book, Dukes Prefer Blondes—update

I've just finished reviewing the copy edits and making corrections to the manuscript of Dukes Prefer Blondes. This is my next-to-last chance to go over the work and try to catch as many errors and stupidities as possible. The copy editor has gone over the manuscript in detail, correcting punctuation, spelling, and typos; providing formatting instructions for the printer; correcting or querying inconsistencies; and pointing out content that looks wrong or sentences that don't make sense. 

It is always a wonder to me how anybody can do this for 400 pages (probably two or three times, I'll bet) and not set the manuscript on fire. Of course, these days, we are copy editing electronically, using Track Changes, so the fire would only be virtual.

Track Changes definitely makes things easier and faster, and I'm happy to have it. But my brain doesn't always read the computer screen correctly. I know some authors can work without ever printing out anything, but they are not me. I went through the whole manuscript electronically. Then, because I had time and  OCD, I printed it out and went over it again. And guess what?  I found 20 or more problems I'd missed on the first run-through. And you know what? Next go-round will be the page proofs, and you can be sure I will still find several crazy mistakes that none of us caught the first or second times.

And when the book goes to print, we may be sure there will be at least one mistake.

But that's some time away. The publication date is January 2016, with a release date of 29 December 2015.

Trafalgar Square, illustrated above, plays an important part in the story. This image is from the mid 1830s (Wikipedia has it for 1837-43, but the dresses look 1834-35 to me). The area was a work-in-progress for many years. Nelson's Column wasn't completely completed until the 1860s.

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What is Lady Day?

In Lord of Scoundrels, Lord Dain refers to an event occurring between Candlemas and Lady Day. These dates may not mean much to many readers.  Following is a short explanation, which I originally wrote for Two Nerdy History Girls.                                 ***

The Severe Steward

In my book Lord of Scoundrels, Lord Dain refers to an event occurring before Lady-Day.  He does not mean the singer Billie Holiday.

He’s referring to a Quarter Day, as do characters in many books.  These are important dates in the British calendar, as the following page illustrates.  It’s from a little instruction manual, The Guide to General Information on Common Things (1868).

Quarter Days

According to Hone’s Every-day Book, Vol 1,  “Lady Day is a holiday at the Public Offices, except the Excise, Stamp, and Custom.”  He describes various religious festivals associated with the day, then goes on to note:  “In England, Lady Day is only remembered as the first quarter-day of the year, and is therefore only kept by tenants who truly pay rent to their landlords.”

However, servants were customarily paid on quarter days as well.  Though we tend not to use religious holidays as the marking points nowadays, we do continue to to divide the year into quarters for various financial transactions, e.g. quarterly reports.

William Hone explains Candlemas here.

Image: William Redmore Bigg,The Severe Steward, or Unfortunate Tenant (1800-01), courtesy Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.

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