The Hero in the Black Hat

Alan Rickman as Severus Snape © Warner Bros Pictures

One of the first things I learned as a child watching Saturday matinee movies was that, in a western, the guys in the black hats were usually up to no good. There were few shades of grey in those films: If a man wore a black hat and rode a black horse, he was bad to the core. (Well, or Zorro, but Zorro was Spanish and from California so he had more fashion sense than other heroes...)

The point is, if somebody looked like a villain, he was. This holds true for most bad guys in fiction as well, so I secretly love it when skilled writers put a black hat on a hero and send him out into the plot to confound us.

One of the best of these, in my opinion, is Severus Snape, who in head-to-toe black with his devious ways fits the matinee mould of a villain so well that the great revelation and shift of perception that comes near the end of the last Harry Potter book hits with the force of a punch in the heart.

It's that moment I love—when we're forced to look back through the story and see the events from a different perspective; to see, for the first time, beyond that black hat to the hero beneath.

It's what happens in Mary Stewart's Madam Will You Talk?, when the heroine, Charity, says to the man who's spent half the book stalking her, scaring her, cursing her, that his own son is afraid of him. (Spoilers ahead, if you've not read the book..)

He said, in a curiously flat voice:
"Of me? Are you sure it's of me? Did he say so?"
Then suddenly, I knew. I felt my own eyes widening as his had done, and I sat staring at him like an owl.
"Why" I whispered, "why, I don't believe you killed your friend. I don't believe you ever hurt David in your life. I believe you love him. Don't you? Don't you?"
Richard Byron gave me a queer little twisted smile that hurt. Then he picked up his cigarette again and spoke lightly.
"I love him more than anything else in the world," he said, quite as if it didn't matter.

And just like that, we realize that the way that we've been seeing Richard Byron is all wrong. We have to stop, as does the heroine, and look back at the book's events and try to understand what really happened.

In Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (a favourite novel of mine, and one that contains another brilliant black-hatted hero in Arthur "Boo" Radley), Atticus says: "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."

Like Harry encountering Snape's cloud of memories, or Scout standing out on the Radley's front porch, we as readers are given a new view of everything, and I admire the talented writers who pull this off well. It's a level of skill I aspire to, one day when I find a hero who doesn't mind wearing the wrong-coloured hat.

They're not thick on the ground, really, heroes in black hats. Can you think of any to add to my list?

Come back Thursday, for Julie's next post.

The View (or The Road Less Travelled)

I applied for a job last week. I haven’t properly applied for a job in years, all the jobs I have had recently have been through contacts or recruitment consultants. So I dusted off my writing skills to completely rewrite my CV and fired up my creative skills to write a two page supporting document stating why I fulfilled the criteria.

I didn’t get the job. I didn’t even get interviewed. Bugger.

But this is not a post saying ‘Woe is me’ this is a post about possibilities. You see the job I went for isn’t something I thought I would want to do until it came up and my burning gut reaction was ‘YES’. OK so I didn’t get this one but it has made me realise that there are other jobs out there. Other possibilities

Instead of plodding gently down the straight road I thought I was on, I feel like I have topped a hill I didn’t know I was climbing and as I look over I see the road dividing. Different directions, sparkling possibilities stretching into the future. And the view looks great. Scary but great. I have decided to just sit here for awhile before I move on. It isn’t often in life that you can take your time before committing, mostly we are running full pelt and it is only afterwards that you look back and see where you took the road you are on.

I have no idea where this will all end up. Whether I will follow the well trampled road, straight and safe or whether I will investigate the turning twisty slightly overgrown lane. But until I have to decide I’m going to enjoy the view.

Come back on Sunday to hear from Susanna

Knitting

I have loved knitting since my mother taught me at seven years old. It was a way I could express my creativity without covering myself with paint or flour or anything that required more work. You see I am at heart a lazy sod. Knitting suited me. It provided instant gratification to a point. A few rows and you could 'see' your work and your pattern emerging. I was always gung ho at the start. I'm a really good starter but for years I struggled with the finishing. My mother despaired that I would ever complete a darn thing.

I didn't begin to complete projects until high school and by the time uni hit I was designing my own sweaters. They were in demand by friends and acquaintances. I loved it. Along the way I became skilled at teaching other people and fixing my mistakes as well as theirs...a dropped stitch - no problem.....most of the time.

On a plain sweater a dropped stitch or two was easily fixed...but where a complicated pattern was involved like Fair Isle or Aran then fixing the problem could mean pulling it all out down to the dropped stitch. Ouch. But I'd discovered that unlike on a simple sweater on a complex one you might not have the enough of the right colour thread to fix the problem or not enough ease in the yarn. A simple fix would pull the sweater out of shape or design. To get it right there was no short cut.

I'm finding my edits at the moment the same way. Changing a name is like the simple dropped stitch, but pulling key scenes out and filling them with new ones is like dropping a stitch in an Aran sweater. The tension is all wrong and it's pulling everything out of place. So I'm having to unravel whole chunks of the story to fix the pattern and where once I'd been a whiz at knitting because I was always doing it...I'm a novice at editing and scared to death of the process...I don't wanting howling wind or drenching rain whipping through the holes I've left in the story....

Come back on Thursday to find out what's on Biddy's mind...

Summer Loving

Recently, it’s been raining a lot here in England and when it isn’t raining, it’s hot, humid and dusty in London – not nice. After a few days of either option, I inevitably start to think wistfully about holidays by the Mediterranean or somewhere with sun, sea and sand. From there, it’s a short leap into nostalgia for summer’s past and that thought leads me to thinking about holiday romance ...

"Summer lovin’ had me a blast, Summer lovin’, happened so fast ...”

I recently watched the film “Grease” on TV since I had nothing better to do that day (yes, it was raining again) and the lyrics of that song always send me on a trip down memory lane. Not to the fifties – I’m not THAT old (even if my kids sometimes ask things like “did you have telephones when you were young?”) – but to idyllic summers during my teens. Like Danny and Sandy in the film, I was rather prone to falling in love while on holiday. Or at least have a crush on some really cute guy I saw by the pool every day for two weeks and only plucked up the courage to talk to the day I was leaving.

I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about being on holiday that sets the pulses racing and makes you feel ready to fall in love. Perhaps it’s just the heat, or maybe the sensual sand and sea combination? Or the fact that you’re not in your normal environment so you can pretend you’re someone different from the person you are at home? After all, none of your usual friends will ever know.

That song continues “Summer fling, don’t mean a thing, but oh, those summer nights ...” and I guess that’s true too. I don’t think many holiday romances survive the return to normality. There may be a token attempt at staying in touch by text, e-mail or phone calls, but somehow it’s always very difficult. At least that’s how it seemed to me. And although you might seem compatible with someone while in this temporary environment, at home things might be totally different.

But while it’s happening, it’s magical. What could be more romantic than long, sultry nights walking along a beach with the waves swishing gently around your feet and the moon and stars clear above you? Or flirting while playing around in the pool or the sea? (I love how beach volleyball and water polo give great opportunities for “accidentally” bumping into the person you fancy!) Then there are the local discos and bars, staying up much later at night because you’ve had a siesta, and maybe ending up on the beach round a bonfire ... As a teenager, I used to spend time in Spain ever summer and hanging out with the locals improved my Spanish no end. We had a blast, literally, pairing up and driving to the nearest disco on rickety mopeds. And of course, there was always one special guy ...

We’ve all been there, right? But has it ended in a Happy Ever After for any of you? I’d love to hear about everyone else’s holiday romances.

Please come back on Sunday to hear from Liz!

RNA Conference 2011

The RNA Conference is always a highlight of my year. I love re-connecting with old friends and making new ones. I love the workshops and the celebrations.
I do find it all a bit dazing, though. All those voices in small spaces, all those faces and names... by the end of the first evening I'm always reeling a bit, in danger of losing my voice and with a ringing in my ears usually only experienced after an AC/DC gig.

So, though my ringing ears and reeling brain, and delivered to you in a croaky voice, these are my impressions...

Lizzy Kremer did a fantastic overview of contracts and what to look out for. She reminded us to read a contract with an eye to the best and worse case scenarios - will this clause work for me if the book bombs? And if it takes off, what then?
Louise Allen, Elizabeth Chadwick and Jill Mansell showed us (whether they meant to or not) just how hard working award winning novelists are, and that there as many processes in writing a book as there are authors writing them. Oh, and Louise mentioned that one of her working titles was once rumoured to be Gonad the Barbarian...

I met someone who edited memoirs of soldiers in the Peninsula War, someone who (like me) is fascinated by the breakthroughs of early scientists, someone who recently signed a six-book contract and someone who is interested to find out if pregnancy hormones are going to make her write the best book ever, or the worst book ever...

I learned that there are three golf balls on the moon.... and that shoe envy can be offset by knowing that said shoes are really, really painful.

Louise Allen ran through some of the basic mistakes that all authors can be prone to, for the benefit of our New Writers' Scheme members, including the ones about punctuation, Point of View, and that if you're moaning that a reader "didn't get it" then you're not doing your job as an author.... (and I've caught myself moaning that one myself once or twice!)

Valerie Webster taught us that Regency dances were all about flirting, that men were happy to skip and occasionally formed a couple in the dance if there weren't enough women, that a deep curtsey is Victorian, not Regency, and that I have two left feet.

Elizabeth Hawksley reminded us that characters that feel real have to be seen in their world in the round - showing how they relate to themselves, friends, family, their work, passions, goals... and that at some point a hero must develop emotional goals and recognise them for that.

When Cally Taylor won the Elizabeth Goudge Trophy, and Liz Fenwick came second and I was in the shortlist of six, I remembered what talented company I was in.

And all in all I remembered just how lucky I am to be an RNA member, and how priveleged to be part of this crowd of talented, hard working, savvy, no-prisoners, creative women, with hearts as big as the world.

(If you're on Twitter, follow the fun on #RNAConf11)

Anniversary

This post is in haste; I'm off to the Romantic Novelists' Association conference today.

Last year's conference, in Greenwich, was when all of us Heroine Addicts met up, drank wine, and decided to do a group blog together. I remember walking by the Thames, fanning ourselves from the heat; I remember escaping for coffee and climbing to Greenwich Observatory; I remember drinking wine and laughing; I remember sitting, hungover and tired from lack of sleep, in McDonald's having breakfast, and yet still being inspired; I remember tense waiting for the results of a contest which none of us won, and being thrilled anyway; I remember finding a quiet dark corner to talk research while others were sleeping; I remember sudden moments of exclaiming "Yes! Me too!", silly moments of shoe-appreciation, and comforting moments of silence.

This writing business is often exciting, but it's never easy and having good friends to share it with means more to me than I can say.

Here's to you, fellow Heroine Addicts. It's been a great year. Let's have another.

Anna's at the conference, too, but she'll post when she gets back, I should think.

When You Say Nothing At All

Image from Dear Frankie, copyright 2004 Miramax Films

A couple of weeks ago, over at All About Romance, Leigh put up a post on The Art of Writing Believable Men that I found really interesting, not only because I happen to agree with a lot of her points, but because it set off a discussion of how men can tell you they love you without ever actually saying the words.

When I was interviewed last year at Historical Tapestry and asked about my own heroes, I explained, "I can only draw from men I’ve known in my own life: my grandfathers, my father, and my husband and my friends, all different men, and yet with certain commonalities. If my heroes tend to be quieter men, it’s because the real men I know don’t go emoting all over the place – as a rule, they don’t talk much at all (though to be fair, I talk so much myself it may just be that they can’t get a word in edgewise)."

I know there are probably all sorts of men out there who have no problem at all in expressing their feelings or saying "I love you", but in my experience men tend to do things, not say them. It's always a challenge for me as a writer to work in those small, quiet gestures that show what the hero is feeling, or wanting to say. Each hero is different, and how he expresses his feelings in action is different, as well.

Again in my experience, the simplest, smallest thing can show the deepest level of emotion. If my husband brought me flowers, I would be suspicious. But sometimes when we're sitting at the table after dinner and he nudges his sudoku puzzle closer to me so that I can help complete it, then I know he loves me.

That's likely why I love the above-named song so much (here's a link to the Alison Krauss version, played over scenes from the movie Dear Frankie, which is in itself a small masterpiece of how to speak without speaking).

Are your heroes, real-life or otherwise, able to say what they feel? If not, what do they do that translates to "I Love You?"

Be sure to come back to read Julie's post Thursday.