Rose Lerner's Blog

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Hey all, I seem to have injured one of my wrists a bit so I’m trying to cut back on my computer usage for the next few weeks. This means I won’t be posting to my blog as often or replying to e-mail or comments as promptly as usual, and I’ll probably be absent from Twitter and Facebook almost entirely. Thanks for your patience! I promise I’ll be back as soon as possible!

I’ll be posting to Favorite Thing EVER on Tuesdays as scheduled, and don’t forget, Susanna Fraser is guest blogging here on Wednesday! And of course the In for a Penny short story will go up September 1st as scheduled.

Update on Dorchester (my publisher): I’m sure some of you have heard that my editor Leah Hultenschmidt was laid off last week. The book is in copyedits already, and I’ve been told this won’t affect the publication timeline. I’ll keep you posted as I hear more.

On a personal note, I’ll miss Leah a lot. She’s a fabulous editor and a wonderful person. It sucks that this happened to her, but I’m excited to see what she does next. ♥

News for this weekend:

1. This is the big one: some of you have probably already heard this, but the news was released on Friday that Dorchester, my publisher, is making major changes. Don’t completely trust the article, though: my understanding is that they are shifting to a focus on e-books and trade paperbacks (the larger format you see literary fiction in), but that while the transition is happening, they will be doing e-books first with the paperback following 6-8 months later.

What I believe this means for A Lily Among Thorns is that the e-book will be available in January as scheduled but the trade paperback won’t be released until June. I will let you know as soon as I have more definite information–my poor editor has a lot on her plate right now so it may be a few days!

2. Since I am apparently going to be an e-author, I finally gave in and signed up for Twitter and Facebook! My twitter is here:

http://twitter.com/roselerner

And my facebook is here:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001428227685

Friend me and I will friend you back? Or, er, “follow” you, as the kids say on Twitter. Also, okay, this is embarrassing as I am technically a Young Person (well, I’m 28), but I find myself utterly mystified by Facebook. Any insights you have into what I am supposed to do with it would be much appreciated!

I can’t remember if I mentioned that I would be in New York visiting family this week–anyway, my uncle, who knows me well, took me to a used bookstore. My purchases:

The Secret History of the South Sea Bubble: the World’s First Great Financial Scandal by Malcolm Balen, about an 18th-century share scheme/fraud and the cover-up.

The 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, a Regency slang dictionary. I hear this one quoted all the time and have wanted it fora while without ever actually buying it, although I do have James Hardy Vaux’s Dictionary of the Flash Language, specifically about criminal cant, which I’m very fond of. Here are a couple of cool entries I’ve come across in my preliminary scanning:

HOB OR NOB. Will you hob or nob with me? a question formerly in fashion at polite tables, signifying a request or challenge to drink a glass of wine with the proposer: if the party challenged answered Nob, they were to chuse whether white or red. This foolish custom is said to have orginated in the days of good queen Bess, thus: when great chimnies were in fashion, there was at each corner of the hearth, or grate, a small elevated projection, called the hob; and behind it a seat. In winter time the beer was placed on the hob to warm: and the cold beer was set on a small table, said to have been called the nob; so that the question, Will you have hob or nob? seems only to have meant, Will you have warm or cold beer? i.e. beer from the hob, or beer from the nob.

TO COAX. To fondle, or wheedle. To coax a pair of stockings; to pull down the part soiled into the shoe, so as to give a dirty pair of stockings the appearance of clean ones. Coaxing is also used, instead of darning, to hide the holes about the ancles.

PUSHING SCHOOL. A fencing school; also a brothel.

###

And my final purchase: The Dragon in the Sword by Michael Moorcock (whose name should probably have stopped being hilarious to me a long time ago, but hasn’t, because I’m secretly 12). Here is the back cover copy:

“I AM THE ETERNAL CHAMPION, THE HERO OF A THOUSAND WORLDS…”

Trapped by a timeless existence, doomed to fight forever, John Daker is the Eternal Champion. Boldly he ventures into spheres unknown to search for his lost love, the beautiful Ermizhad—and the key that will free him from his fate.

On a dark ship piloted by a blind captain…amid the slave stalls of the Cannibal Ghost Women…through the tunnels of doom and the planes of hope…the Eternal Champion must now confront the heart of evil itself—a man named Adolf Hitler…

###

Wow. Just wow.

My friend Cecilia got her new business cards! Aren’t they fantastic? I would be insanely, murderously jealous like in that scene from American Psycho (it won’t let me embed, sorry!) if my own fantastic business cards, designed by Gwen, had not arrived yesterday!

(I remain murderously jealous of Cecy’s photography skills; alas, my camera is not great and my ability to hold my hands steady is worse.)

I even have a silver card-case around somewhere given to me by my uncle. I’ll have to dig it up for conferences.

In other news, today I was looking up “fairy” in the OED to figure out if a different spelling was standard in the Regency, when I came across the first quote for “fairy” as a slang term for a homosexual man:

“1895 Amer. Jrnl. Psychol. VII. 216 This coincides with what is known of the peculiar societies of inverts. Coffee-clatches, where the members dress themselves with aprons, etc., and knit, gossip and crotchet; balls, where men adopt the ladies’ evening dress, are well known in Europe. ‘The Fairies’ of New York are said to be a similar secret organization.”

…

1. Was this really relevant to the American Journal of Psychology?

2. Cross-dressing coffee-clatches! It sounds so boring and like so much fun at the same time. (No offense to my friends who like to knit and crochet—it’s just not my thing.)

3. Now I want an action movie called “The Fairies of New York.” It would be about a secret organization of sexy cross-dressing spies at the turn of the century.

I should be actually posting soon–I got my business cards and A Lily Among Thorns bookmarks in the mail today, Gwen and I went to see the new Robin Hood movie, and I have a fabulous signed book to give away–but in the meantime here are two things I found hilarious while reading the first twenty pages or so of Lactilla, Milkwoman of Clifton: the Life and Writings of Ann Yearsley, 1753-1806 by Mary Waldron:

1. Someone wrote a scathing critique of Hannah More’s writing under the pen name the Revd. Sir Archibald MacSarcasm, Bart. OMG GENIUS.

2. In a footnote to a passage beginning, “Johnson thought of the imagination as that power of the mind to evoke what is not ‘really’ there and consequently as a potential threat to stability and order,” Waldron cites an article entitled “Some Limits in Johnson’s Literary Criticism.” I’m not sure I can really explain why this struck me as so funny. It just…I immediately pictured the author of the article making a list of possible titles, as so:

“Dr. Johnson Was Kind of an Asshole You Guys”
“I Kind of Think Johnson’s Literary Criticism Is Crap”
“No Seriously He Thought that ‘Imagination’ Was a Threat to the Social Order”
“He Said It Worked Against Morality and Religion”
“Also Did You Hear that Thing He Said about Women Preachers Being Like a Dog Walking on its Hind Legs”
“Dr. Johnson’s Thoughts on Books: An Epic Debunking”

Hmm, better, but not quite there yet, he thinks.

“Hester Phrale Should Probably Have Poisoned His Food”

No, no! You have to sound like a professional!

“Some Limits in Johnson’s Literary Criticism”

Ah, yes, perfect.

Of course I haven’t read the article, nor do I know a thing about the author or his feelings about Johnson. But this is what I will IMAGINE using my powers of IMAGINING things which are not “REALLY” there! Take that, Dr. Johnson!

Had a lovely geeky bonding moment with my co-worker today. We were talking about the Declaration of Independence, as you do, and then 1776: the Musical, which he wants me to see, and John and Abigail Adams, and that reminded me of something in my high school American history textbook, which I loved.

ME: It was really dramatic and it always gave everyone’s heights.
CO-WORKER: That’s hilarious.
ME: Like it said, “John Quincy Adams was 5’9″ and a chip off the old family iceblock.” [Disclaimer: I made up that height. It is probably wrong.]
CO-WORKER: Wait a minute. I had that same textbook!

Awesome! We agreed that it also had really good pictures to go with everything. (Another favorite turn of phrase was something like, “this poured holy oil on the flames of conflict.”)

In other news, my critique partner Susanna Fraser (the Kindle edition of whose book is now available for pre-order), has unveiled her placeholder website. Or rather, her husband has. I died laughing when I saw it. It is ADORABLE. It starts, “Susanna Fraser is an author based in Seattle. She goaded her husband into making this website for her, even though he is busy and preoccupied. This site is a demonstration of why you never hire family to design your website for you,” and goes from there…

So, tomorrow is July 4th. The anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress.

Here’s the second paragraph:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. ”

If my research has taught me anything, it’s that in 1776, these truths were anything but self-evident. “All men are created equal,” governments “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”—in England at this time period that was radicalism. “Democracy” was a dirty word to many. And I’m really, really proud to be part of a country that started out from that point. (Well, started out from that point in theory, at least.)

And now for something a little sillier (but that totally makes me cry—I’m a sap, I admit it!): Captain Kirk reading the Preamble to the Constitution.

Doing some research about women in 18th-century elections, and came across two fabulous quotes. The first one is from a letter between two politicians during the 1754 parliamentary elections; the woman in question’s husband is involved in two separate elections in different towns in Dorset and she’s helping with his campaign:

“Mrs. Pitt tells me she has been a buck-hunting three days in the week at five o’clock in the morning, and drinking strong beer with the freeholders at that hour, to convince them she is an Englishwoman. She returns to-morrow to assist her worst half at the meeting of the seventh at Dorchester.”

And a commentary from before the same election, from Jackson’s Oxford Journal, about Lady Susan Keck, an important political hostess:

“I am far from thinking that the Ladies are unconcern’d in our Members [i.e. members of parliament/parliamentary affairs], or that they should sit primm’d with their hands passively before ‘em, and their Mouths drawn up like the Purse of an old Usurer, whilst we are engaged in this important Business; but then neither would I have them swagger amongst the Men, and Holla, and roar, and fill out Bumpers with an Air more becoming Colonel Bully than Lady Dainty. Much less would I have Ladies of Distinction, out of an intemperate Zeal for their Country, send away from their Houses, not only Men, but even Persons of their own Sex, so disguised with Liquor as to merit the Stocks as an Example.”

By the way, today is the last official day to submit ideas for my In for a Penny short story I’ll be posting to the website in September! You can send me your ideas via the contest page on the website, here. I’ll probably leave the form up a couple extra days, but if you’ve been leaving it to the last minute, the last minute is here!

WOOOOOOO! I have turned in the manuscript of A Lily Among Thorns! Of course this is just the first pass and I’ll be getting a revision letter someday soon, but right now I am still riding the high. Those two weeks of working double shifts were kind of crazy and having free time again is AMAZING! (I’ve already watched almost half the first season of Gossip Girl…)

I thought I’d take this opportunity to post photos from my two signings. Here are a couple from the first one at Third Place Books with Gayle Ann Williams (whose book Tsunami Blue you all need to read–I finally finished it a couple weeks ago and LOVED it! I’ll be giving away a copy here at some point, too). Sorry some of these are not great quality, they were taken on a phone!

Me and Gayle:

I was so nervous at this event and Gayle was so sweet and let me speak first. I don’t know what I would have done without her. Here’s Gayle and Marianne Strnad from our chapter:

And then some great ones from the debut Dorchester authors signing at the Redmond Town Center Borders. That one was me, Gayle, Amy Rench (author of Fallen Rogue), and Marie-Claude Bourque. (Marie-Claude’s book Ancient Whispers is being released today by the way! She has a cool online launch party set up here.)

(L to R: Amy, Gayle, me, and Marie-Claude)

My friend Sonia helped us do a proper Charlie’s Angels pose for this one (luckily since none of us could remember exactly how it should work):

As you can see on the table Gayle brought chocolate for everyone because she is awesome. And this one is actually my favorite, we just look so authorial:

Thank you to all my friends and fellow GSRWA members who came and made the events so fun and successful!