Dear Heart: The Courting Letters

A trip to my mailbox these days might yield bills, ads, and the usual collection of junk mail.  The sight of a handwritten letter nestled in the pile delights me. It was not always so. More than a century ago, letters and illustrated postcards were the main ways people communicated, be they friends, relations, or lovers. Phones were an expensive luxury.

Almost twenty years ago, when I discovered an antique writing box filled with courting letters from 1909-1910, even a cursory reading had me hooked.  Here were two people, Gertie and Fred, courting (a.k.a. dating, getting to know one another) via the written word and little packages they sent to each other. Separated between Ipswich, England, and St. Paul, Minnesota, a letter took ten days one way by train and ship. No instant communication was possible! The letter sent was usually not the one answered. I knew there was a story here, and it never let me alone.

I began by transcribing the letters. Fred wrote sixteen-page letters single-spaced. Gertie’s handwriting was creative, often spilling over onto play programs and church bulletins.

At my daughter Kirsten’s suggestion, I interwove a fictional modern couple’s story to add contrast. I chose 2010 in Chicago and Spain as the setting. Some elements—emotions, needs, hurdles, obstacles—are universal. But most young people in love today don’t write letters.  Multiple other vehicles for communication exist. The restraints that existed in 1910 have softened, but not disappeared entirely.

My research entailed digging deeper into the historical events mentioned in the letters and in the two eras.

I purposely highlighted the contrasts between the two stories—modes of communication, technology, transportation, dissemination of information, fashions, speech. One of the most interesting contrasts involved women’s rights and freedoms.

My modern heroine, Lisa, despite her troubles in the dating world, has the freedom make choices, to be an independent woman. My 1909-10 heroine, Gertie, though she admires the suffragettes, hesitates to tell Fred her true feelings; people criticize her for refusing to marry someone else she doesn’t love.

A peek at Lisa: “With the click of computer keys, the Internet made it possible to communicate with more than one person at a time. Lisa crawled into bed and clicked off the lamp. I’m just one small soup can on a grocery soup aisle filled with an array of brands. Why pick me?”

A peek at Gertie: “Men had the best of it. Women, relegated to loving someone, but not showing it, must wait to put their true feelings into words until asked to be someone’s wife.” At another point, Mr. Jones, who rents a room from Gertie and fancies her, is off to a men’s-only meeting at church. Gertie writes, “How I wish I were a man.”

My vision for this book included illustrations. So I enlisted my artistically/graphically talented daughter Kirsten to turn photos, paintings, postcards, luggage tags, and letters into 27 vivid chapter openers and 17 interior illustrations.

Writer Wallace Stegner once said, “Any life will provide the material for writing, if it is attended to.”

So in Dear Heart: The Courting Letters, I attended to the lives of these two real people and invented two other fictional ones. Of the twenty-two books I’ve written, this one is close to my heart.

I hope readers will become as fascinated with history as I am and be inspired to listen to their hearts and persevere despite obstacles.

Persistence is the key to writing success. If an idea won’t let you alone, then follow it. Learn about the craft, research, revise, and read. Above all, write what you love!

Dear Heart is available on Amazon, Barnes & Nobel, and bookstores.

Visit Judith at www.judithjosephson.com, and follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest.

There are so many ways to get published in 2015. Jan Moran and Judith Lown have published  traditionally as well as indie. Both also write romance but Moran writes historical and contemporary fiction and Lown focuses on the Regency Period. Both know how to write a compelling tale that keeps their readers turning the pages. They will be featured speakers at the October Authors’ Salon on writing and publishing romance (see details above).

Moran will talk about her historical novel, Scent of Triumph (St. Martin’s Press). A very long plane trip to Paris seemed much shorter as I read the ebook edition. I began to understand so much more about the perfume industry that, of course, I had to purchase a very special new scent. I was in Paris after all! As Moran said:

“I write stylish books for smart women. My characters are often running a business, and juggling their love life and family responsibilities. Like real people, they make mistakes, but they always save themselves in a creative manner. In both my contemporary and historical novels, I write for the modern woman who wants to enjoy all life has to offer.”

Much like her characters, Moran draws on her international travel and business experiences, infusing her books with realistic details. She also writes contemporary women’s fiction (Flawless, Beauty Mark, Runway) and nonfiction books (Vintage Perfumes, Fabulous Fragrances). I enjoyed Moran’s presentation at the SDSU Writers’ Conference in San Diego and invited her to be part of the Authors’ Salon. She also presented at the Romance Writers of America (RWA) earlier this year.

Judith Lown began reading historical Regency romance during a stressful time in her life when she was a social worker helping disintegrating families. She needed to escape during her free time, and began reading historical Regencies. Lown said:

“This genre was created by Georgette Heyer and her Regencies were marked by heroines of taste and courage and heroes who could more than hold their own with ladies who knew their own minds. Heyer despised sentimentality, cowardice, and both mindless conformity on one hand, and self-indulgent non-conformity on the other.”

In her newest title, Boston Tangle: Regency Comes to America, Lown transports three of her English characters from previous books to Boston where they interact with the upper class and, of course, there is a love story—a tangled tale. Lown’s heroine Drusilla Fortesque is a lady who knows her own mind and Lown laces her writing with wry wit and avoids sappiness. Heyer would be proud.

Judith Lown has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and her understanding of family systems theory helps her develop rich, character-driven plots. She is a dog lover and an active volunteer for the Greyhound Adoption Center which has inspired her to include a canine character in each of her novels.

During the panel discussion, authors will share their writing process (very different), their publishing paths, and advice to aspiring authors. If you do not live in San Diego County and cannot attend this stimulating evening (did I mention wine and dessert?), watch for a follow-up blog where I will share all their practical advice!

Georgette Heyer:  What Makes An Incomparable?

Georgette Heyer might not have been the first writer to use Incomparable to designate a lady whose beauty is sufficiently compelling to thaw the hearts of icy Lords, turn erstwhile warriors into babysitters, or, most importantly, transform notorious rakes into faithful, monogamous husbands.  However, she can be credited with establishing the Incomparable as a fixture of the Regency Romance, just as she established the Regency as a staple among romance novels.

But of all the Incomparables brought to life by Heyer, none is as deserving of the title as she is, herself.  No.  She was not a great beauty.  No. She did not have a dashing career as the most sought-after debutante.  She did not even participate in a London Season. Indeed, before she was of an age to do so, she was writing her first novel, The Black Moth, in order to entertain her seriously ill brother. All the same, she well earns the title Incomparable.

Founder of a Literary Genre

Who else founded a literary genre?  Edgar Allen Poe, Mary Shelley, H.G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Louis L’Amour?  The list is short.

What other writer whose career extended from 1921 to 1974 has her own Amazon page with audio, paperback and e-editions available—all with 4+ star ratings?

What is it about Heyer’s novels that set them apart from so many other historical novels that have their time of popularity and then fade? The answer, I believe, is that Georgette Heyer, while wholly absorbed in the mores and fashions of a specific time in history, had a keen eye for ageless human foibles and eternal human values.

Heyer’s Era

Think about what was happening in England and the world during Heyer’s writing career. It began just after World War I had concluded, which left behind widows, orphans and single young women whose chances for marriage and family had died in the trenches of Normandy.  The Ottoman Empire was collapsing.  Armenians were the victims of genocide.  Maimed and shell-shocked veterans were struggling to find their bearings in civilian society. Then came the worldwide Depression.  Fascism, Nazism, and Communism gained adherents.

World War II consumed the ‘40’s.  Heyer’s beloved London barely survived the Blitz.

And when the war ended Britain withdrew from its Empire and experienced the longest period of food rationing of any country following the war.

Then there was the Cold War and the specter of a nuclear holocaust.

When Heyer died in 1974, long held social customs were being abandoned, and it was not at all clear that The West would win the Cold War.

Heyer’s Genre

During all those years fraught with conflict and danger, Heyer wrote about young ladies doing what they could to forge a life for themselves—preferably by making an advantageous marriage—in a hypocritical, arbitrary, and, essentially, unjust society, and, about the gentlemen from among whom they might choose to navigate those treacherous societal shoals.

In Heyer’s novels, the ladies and gentlemen dancing beneath the multi-candled chandeliers, driving on high-perched phaetons, or simply parading in Hyde Park, wearing the latest stare of fashion, are human beings who make choices of expediency or honor; think primarily of themselves or others; whine and complain about their lot or play the hand they are dealt with all the wit and grace they can muster.

New readers pick up a Heyer novel to lose themselves in the antics of an over-privileged elite of a bygone era.  But Heyer never confuses froth with substance.  She constructs challenges for her characters’ courage, fortitude and honor, and lets them learn by the consequences of their decisions and behavior—sometimes with a gentle smile, sometimes with ridicule.

Happy Birthday to the Incomparable Georgette

Friday is the 111^th anniversary of Georgette Heyer’s birth.  The world into which she was born is as distant from our world as the Regency period was from hers.  But she never permitted current events and preoccupations to interfere with her art, which was the interplay of the most ephemeral of worlds with the most unchanging.

That makes her an Incomparable.

Please Share

If you, too, are a Geogette Heyer fan, share why you love her books. If not, nominate another author who deserves the title Incomparable.

To celebrate the birthday of Geogette Heyer, my novel A Sensible Lady: A Traditional Regency Romance (inspired by Heyer) will be free on Amazon on Friday, August 16. Enjoy!

A perennial question for readers is: Do you read for character, plot, or setting?  Of course, this is an artificial choice. Most of us read for all three—or at least we don’t want a major disappointment in any of these three elements.

But, in a romance novel, plot and setting will not compensate for undifferentiated or unconvincing characters. The plot, after all, is already known: Man meets woman.  Man loses woman/Woman loses man. Man and woman find each other. Even if this plot plays out in an engrossing setting, it still will fall flat if there is not something unique about this particular man and this particular woman. If the plot is satisfying, much of it will be the natural playing out of the character and motivations of this man and this woman.

Do writers create or discover their characters? I’m not sure. I do know that characters won’t be shy about telling a writer what they will or will not do. Lady Constance actually let me know that she was quite worried that I was the one who was writing her story. She wasn’t at all certain that I was up to the task.

But where do these characters come from?

My first two novels began with scenes that I carried around in my brain for years:  A Match for Lady Constance grew out of a scene of an ill-matched pair being discovered alone in a library—a social taboo in Regency England.  A Sensible Lady grew out of a scene of a lady skipping stones on a lake and being surprised by a gentleman skipping a stone from behind her. Everything else in those two books: the physical appearance of the main characters, their personalities, their “issues”—everything flowed out of the seed scenes.

Now, I am working on my first sequel. Jack and Drusilla, the hero and heroine of my work-in-progress, were supporting players in A Match for Lady Constance. So when I started to write their story, I had some idea of who these two people are, why they are drawn to each other, and what roadblocks keep them from instantly, mutually, recognizing that they want to spend the rest of their lives together.

But guess what? From the start of my thinking about Jack and Drusilla, I was really clear about the setting for their book. Don’t ask me why this story had to take place in Boston. All I know is that it had to. Getting Drusilla to Boston was no easy matter, nor was discovering the details of her life once she got there. She is, after all, a truly Sensible Lady—much more sensible than Katherine, the heroine of my book by that title. So why in the world would Drusilla go gallivanting off across an ocean, away from family and friends? In this case setting required character development, which created plot.

I don’t want to think of all the cul de sacs I’ve written into, trying to tell Drusilla and Jack’s story.  But I have learned that the only way to get out of those cul de sacs is to go back to my characters and let them tell me more about themselves.

Please share

Tell us about your writing process. Do you ever start with setting? Do your characters tell you what to do?

The first Regency Romances weren’t historical; they were contemporary fiction written by Jane Austen.  But her work established critical standards that are still used to evaluate romantic fiction today—200 years after she wrote.  Any literate female who reads English will be able to tell you when she first read an Austen novel and which is her favorite.

The first historical Regency Romances were written by Georgette Heyer from 1934-1972. It was Heyer who introduced the ton—London’s most select society—to fiction readers.  And her unique perspective on what makes a lady admirable and what makes a gentleman honorable is the yardstick by which connoisseurs of traditional Regencies still measure Regency Romance writers.

Both Austen and Heyer are romance writers, but neither can be called Romantic Writers in a literary sense. The Bronte sisters are prime examples of Romantic Writers. Bronte heroines live in a world of high emotion and extreme behavior.  Austen and Heyer are in the classical tradition, which emphasizes self-control, restraint, and balanced judgment—even in the face of distressing circumstances.

What we have in both Austen and Heyer heroines is something much more serious than “pluck to the backbone.”  It is a toughness of mind that, while not denying longing and love, faces unpleasant realities without self-pity.

When writing A Sensible Lady: A Traditional Regency Romance, I consciously asked myself “What attitude would Heyer take?” when I was dealing with the potentially dire situation in which my heroine, Katherine Brampton, found herself.  She had to be courageous but discreet, realistically worried but not hysterical or whiny.  No one threaded those needles with the skill of Austen and Heyer.

And what about heroes?  Mr. Darcy and Mr. Knightly are proverbial for their upholding of Society’s standards and their insistence that conventions be observed—even at the risk of losing the loves of their lives.  Likewise, Heyer’s heroes might have their peccadilloes.  They might be arrogant or rude. But they understand the rules that bind the lives of the ladies they love and they adjust their behavior accordingly. Lord Worth waits until Judith Tavener reaches her majority and is no longer his ward before he courts her.  Lord Damerel, a man with a dissolute past, refrains from seducing a vulnerable Venetia.   Indeed, in Heyer’s entire Regency oeuvre, there is only one elopement, and even it is conducted in a rational manner.

Again, when portraying Lord Henry Dracott, the hero of A Sensible Lady, Heyer’s heroes provided me with models of how the demands of civilized society in the Regency period were negotiated by gentlemen who, by nature, were impatient with nuance and emotions.

Currently, the most popular historical novels that take place in the first two decades of the 1800’s are called “Historicals of the Regency Period.”  These are emotionally intense, sexually explicit romances.  Many are flawlessly accurate in historical details.  The equipage of a carriage—even the type of carriage—is painstakingly described.  Actual historical events are faithfully represented.  It wouldn’t be surprising if the weather of a certain date reflected contemporaneous weather reports.  But the behavior of the hero and heroine is more reflective of 2012 than 1812.  Some of these books are wonderfully written and very entertaining.  But the men and women who populate them have much more to say about twenty-first century relationships than nineteenth century relationships.

What both Austin and Heyer examine in their romances is how men and women—ladies and gentlemen—seek and earn personal happiness while remaining within the strictures of a demanding social order.  While maintaining factual historical accuracy, writers of Traditional Regencies also try to reflect the social realities of the period.

What aspects of historical accuracy do you think are most important?  What lapses are so irritating that you stop reading?

Judith Lown

No problem.

Dress some ladies in high-waisted, low-necked gowns with narrow skirts and puffed sleeves. Have them say “lud.” Be sure that the heroine is a) a saucy miss, b) pluck to the backbone, c) a minx.  Her best friend has “more hair than wit.”

Gentlemen must wear high shirt points with elaborately folded neck cloths, coats, and inexepressibles molded to reveal all masculine attributes. The hero may or may not be titled, but he doesn’t suffer fools gladly.

Mix all ingredients in London’s Mayfair, a stately country home, an idyllic village—or any combination thereof.

Voilà, you have a Regency Romance!

Not. So. Fast.

It is true that historical fiction has a built-in escape element that recommends it to recreational readers. Different clothes. Different vocabulary. More horses. No cars. But for real escape, characters must be genuine, coping with life situations that are believable for the given time period according to the customs and rules of that time period. The more the historical fiction writer is immersed in the period, the more believable the characters and plots will be. And the only way to immerse oneself in a given historical period is by research. The first step in this process is learning your historical period. Here are some basic facts about the Regency.

The narrow definition of Regency is years 1811-1830, the time when George III was still living but was declared insane, so his son, the Prince of Wales, was named Regent. It’s possible to write a “Regency” that takes place in 1805. Fashions, manners and morals were the same. But the writer had better know that Prinny was just the Prince of Wales at that time.

Know what was going on in the larger world. When the Regency began, England and France had been at war since 1793, with only a brief respite during The Peace of Amiens, from 1801-1803. Napoleon’s final defeat did not come until the Battle of Waterloo, June 18, 1815.

It is quite possible to write many books that take place during this time and never mention one of these facts, but you still need to know them. For example, you probably don’t want to have anyone eloping to Paris from England from 1803 until after June 18, 1815.

A Senisble Lady: A Traditional Regency

I wanted my first Regency, A Match for Lady Constance, to be light hearted and frivolous, so I purposely set in 1816. That was the first Season in years that had no shadow of war in the background.

On the other hand, my new novel, A Sensible Lady: A Traditional Regency Romance, published by eFrog Press, takes place toward the end of the war.  Beginning in 1813, while the war is still being waged, its tone is introspective. There is a sense in which the affirmation of life with which the book ends is punctuated by the end of war in Spain.

What are some of the important background facts that must be taken into account in other historical periods? How do they play against your plots?