Five themes, from Lady of the Log
Delicious meme. Thank you, darling.
I'm a reasonable writer and a better cook because of my nose. This is not an allusion to the quality that killed the cat. This is basic and visceral: I like stink, odor, skank and sprays. I like buses in mid-summer when the AC can't keep up with the sweat and there's a thousand shades of coppery reek in a single ten-foot space. I like old shoes and used dryer sheets and other people's houses (they always smell funny, distinctively and characteristically distinct.) I put things near my nose that no reasonable human wants to smell: rotting meat, wizened oranges, guano. You'd expect that this sort of habit would start with perfume, and you'd be right: my mother's Fendi, when I was five. I can still recall the notes of it: though my retention of faces is poor and my capacity for names even worse, my olfactory memory is excellent. I use that talent to get into character as I write, to spice and season while I cook. Every character has a specific scent, and every dish needs something the recipe left out. And I figure out what, and who, and how, with a whiff.
If I liked scent before I turned fifteen, I grew into the fascination working at the Indian restaurant in my hometown. You haven't lived until you're spicing meat and the cook asks you for something in a language you've never learned, and you squat and take a look at the under-counter and realize the spices in this place are kept in wide open dishes and that none of them are labeled. After shift that night, the very polite cook sat down with me and gave me a little bit of each spice to smell and taste; kindness, for me, will always be coded in cumin, ginger, mustard-seed and turmeric. And when I am feeling blasted, exhausted or shamed, I still go to the spice aisle in the Global Foods and run my hands over the plastic bags of bay leaves and lentils.
If you stripped me down to the little green shoot inside the onion --metaphorically speaking, here-- you'd find that my most intimate concern is to expand my horizons. If you tucked the next layer back into place around that, you'd find that I was born to be a writer because that's what I believe a writer does and is --that a writer builds experience, slaps on clay and salt until she can encompass or mimic every walk of life, every perspective and persona. So really, anything, everything I do that I do for sake of my writing, I am doing first and foremost for myself. Getting to tell people what to do, give them my opinion about their work? That's just the sauce on the world's most awesome meatloaf --to be in an environment, on a regular basis, where writing is an honest and devout priority.
I am a very big girl, and at my core I am never going to grow out of ballgowns and dukes and waltzing. It just can't happen. As a result, the Regency of romance appeals to me: it's schmaltzy and just removed enough from my historical reality that I can dip into the fantasy and feel less of the guilt for the social injustices and classism that most of the genre perpetuates.
But if you're looking for recommendations . . . start with Joanna Bourne. She's bar-none the finest romance author writing in that period. See also The Scarlet Pimpernel and Georgette Heyer, who wrote the book (and about a billion others. Books, that is.) Also check out Lisa Kleypas, especially her two most recent series; Eloisa James and Amanda Quick. The latter is a particular favorite of mine; start with Seduction.
Tie for first-place?
Sybel, from The Forgotten Beasts of Eld who has always been my pattern-card. The similarities are all under the surface, but they're there.
Rosalind Hawkins, The Fire Rose. I am not a particular fan of Mercedes Lackey, but if it didn't have her name on the cover I wouldn't know that Fire Rose was her work. Also a pattern-card, in ways more obvious.
Since, of course, I cannot pick a favorite from one of my own darlings. *taps her forehead.* But they know I love them best.
PS: Ask in the comments for your own list of five!
I'm a reasonable writer and a better cook because of my nose. This is not an allusion to the quality that killed the cat. This is basic and visceral: I like stink, odor, skank and sprays. I like buses in mid-summer when the AC can't keep up with the sweat and there's a thousand shades of coppery reek in a single ten-foot space. I like old shoes and used dryer sheets and other people's houses (they always smell funny, distinctively and characteristically distinct.) I put things near my nose that no reasonable human wants to smell: rotting meat, wizened oranges, guano. You'd expect that this sort of habit would start with perfume, and you'd be right: my mother's Fendi, when I was five. I can still recall the notes of it: though my retention of faces is poor and my capacity for names even worse, my olfactory memory is excellent. I use that talent to get into character as I write, to spice and season while I cook. Every character has a specific scent, and every dish needs something the recipe left out. And I figure out what, and who, and how, with a whiff.
If I liked scent before I turned fifteen, I grew into the fascination working at the Indian restaurant in my hometown. You haven't lived until you're spicing meat and the cook asks you for something in a language you've never learned, and you squat and take a look at the under-counter and realize the spices in this place are kept in wide open dishes and that none of them are labeled. After shift that night, the very polite cook sat down with me and gave me a little bit of each spice to smell and taste; kindness, for me, will always be coded in cumin, ginger, mustard-seed and turmeric. And when I am feeling blasted, exhausted or shamed, I still go to the spice aisle in the Global Foods and run my hands over the plastic bags of bay leaves and lentils.
If you stripped me down to the little green shoot inside the onion --metaphorically speaking, here-- you'd find that my most intimate concern is to expand my horizons. If you tucked the next layer back into place around that, you'd find that I was born to be a writer because that's what I believe a writer does and is --that a writer builds experience, slaps on clay and salt until she can encompass or mimic every walk of life, every perspective and persona. So really, anything, everything I do that I do for sake of my writing, I am doing first and foremost for myself. Getting to tell people what to do, give them my opinion about their work? That's just the sauce on the world's most awesome meatloaf --to be in an environment, on a regular basis, where writing is an honest and devout priority.
I am a very big girl, and at my core I am never going to grow out of ballgowns and dukes and waltzing. It just can't happen. As a result, the Regency of romance appeals to me: it's schmaltzy and just removed enough from my historical reality that I can dip into the fantasy and feel less of the guilt for the social injustices and classism that most of the genre perpetuates.
But if you're looking for recommendations . . . start with Joanna Bourne. She's bar-none the finest romance author writing in that period. See also The Scarlet Pimpernel and Georgette Heyer, who wrote the book (and about a billion others. Books, that is.) Also check out Lisa Kleypas, especially her two most recent series; Eloisa James and Amanda Quick. The latter is a particular favorite of mine; start with Seduction.
Tie for first-place?
Sybel, from The Forgotten Beasts of Eld who has always been my pattern-card. The similarities are all under the surface, but they're there.
Rosalind Hawkins, The Fire Rose. I am not a particular fan of Mercedes Lackey, but if it didn't have her name on the cover I wouldn't know that Fire Rose was her work. Also a pattern-card, in ways more obvious.
Since, of course, I cannot pick a favorite from one of my own darlings. *taps her forehead.* But they know I love them best.
PS: Ask in the comments for your own list of five!