Tessa Dare

Argh. I seem to be turning into a weekly blogger. I apologize. I will try to start posting a late-week blog now and again, but thanks for always popping by on Tuesdays!

Just a note on last week’s topic – I’ve learned that having a soundtrack for one’s book is very helpful when one must go back to revise said book, months later. Yep, I got my first edits on GOTH — tres exciting. And going back and listening to all those songs I had on heavy rotation while I wrote it is really helping me get back into the book.

So here is a TMI Tuesday topic generously donated by our dear friend, Vagabond Lindsey.

Prostitution.

Often called the “world’s oldest profession”, prostitution shows up a lot in historical romance. Lately we’ve had some romances with prostitute heroines, most notably Anna Campbell’s (amazing and powerful) Claiming the Courtesan. In Elizabeth Hoyt’s (delicious and witty) The Raven Prince, the heroine goes to a brothel and pretends to be a prostitute. And then those rakish Alpha heroes we love so well often have a number of prostitutes in their past. High-class ones, of course — you know, the elite courtesan, the kept mistress.

Both of my heroes thus far (Jeremy in GOTH and Gray in SOAS) have some pay-for-play dalliances in their pasts. Although Hero #3 doesn’t. In Gray’s case, because he was a sailor traveling from port to port… ’nuff said. And in Jeremy’s case, because i wanted him to be quite experienced, and the alternatives were:
Virgins – not cool
Married women – also not cool
Servants or tenants who are financially dependent on him – way not cool
Loose women and widows – okay. He had some of those, too.

But think about putting these heroes into a contemporary romance… and ick! Who is going to find a modern hero likable if he’s been with a bunch of high-class call girls? But then, the modern hero has far more socially acceptable outlets for his, er, passion.

What do you think about this? Do historicals romanticize prostitution? (Not that historicals are alone in using the “hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold” storyline – just look at Pretty Women.) Is it truly historically accurate, to assume every man of means visited the brothels or kept a mistress? Do you think less of a romantic hero if he’s been with prostitutes? Would you think less of a RL guy?

I have been a bad girl. I have not blogged in a week. I promised you sailing pictures, and I did not deliver. Bad, bad Tessa.

Okay, here is one of our ship firing on the brig Lady Washington. That’s our captain, giving the order.

I’ll post more another day, promise!

Then, Alice Audrey tagged me last week, and I have not yet responded. I was supposed to tell you seven interesting things about myself. Well, if you’ve been reading this blog for the past year or so, you know just about everything interesting there is to know about me. The rest of it is quite boring, indeed.

One other thing I’ve done in the last few weeks is acquired a spiffy new Zen MP3 player, which Mr. Dare has been industriously filling up with songs. I’ve discovered that I have rather embarrassing tastes in music.

And somehow it has rolled around to Tuesday again, and time for TMI. So I’m trying to kill a few goats with one stone here. (And no, Lindsey, I have not forgotten all your marvelous topic suggestions. I’m hoarding them. *g*)

I often listen to music to pump myself up to write a scene. Now, I’d love to say that I’m listening to Mahler and Barber and Puccini and the like, but I’m not. I’m mostly listening to a rather embarrassing mix of alt/pop/rock/emo music that completely shows my age. And the more emotionally manipulative the song, the better.

For example, when Fanlit was going on, the song “Chasing Cars” by Snow Patrol was in heavy radio rotation and darn near inescapable. Come on, sing it with me: “If I lay here…If I just lay here…Will you lie with me and just forget the world…” That song is pretty much where my winning amnesia chapter, “Forget Me Not”, originated. Explains a lot, doesn’t it?

Lately, I listen to Fall Out Boy’s “This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race” when I’m trying to psych myself up to kick some writing butt. Or while I’m washing dishes.

So, interesting or not, here are seven songs I admit to occasionally humming as I write:

1. “Far Away” by Nickelback. Was in heavy rotation while I wrote GOTH.
2. “Iris” by Goo Goo Dolls. Just… awwww.
3. “Three More Days” by Ray LaMontagne. The most sexy, seductive song.
4. “Come On, Eileen” by Dexy’s Midnight Runners. A different method of seduction.
5. “Feelin’ Love” by Paula Cole. Way sexy, too; but from the girl’s POV.
6. “My Hero” and “Everlong” by Foo Fighters. I crush so hard on this band. Okay, mostly on Dave Grohl. Mr. Dare and I have tickets for their show in LA in March. Yay!
7. “The Reason”, by Hoobastank. I know, I know…it’s so junior-high semi-formal slow-dance. Revile me if you must.

Oh, but none of this is anywhere near as embarrassing as the soundtrack to my real-life romance with Mr. Dare, which prominently features 80s hit “Build Me Up Buttercup” and that classic Diana Ross/Lionel Ritchie duet, “Endless Love”. That’s a story for another Tuesday.

So, consider yourselves tagged: What songs are the soundtrack for your fictional or real-life romances? What’s the cheesiest love song you just can’t hear too many times?

I’ve been busy. Over the weekend, I:
*Went to my chapter meeting, where our speaker, Carly Phillips, confessed to having a writing process almost as messy as mine. I love her for it.
*Went sailing. And I promise, I will post more about it and some pictures later this week.
*Finished the draft of SOAS. Yay!!!

I actually have a lot to blog about, and I am just now getting the time to do it. But today is Tuesday, so all that other stuff will just have to wait.

Before my friend contacted me last week with her hair-removal emergency, I got to thinking about sleeping arrangements.

In old movies and TV shows, you see the couples sleeping in twin beds. Supposedly, Mike and Carol Brady were the first couple allowed to share a bed on-screen. (I meant to find some pictures, but I couldn’t! Let me know if you do.)

Those who read historicals know that, among the aristocracy, the husband and wife would have separate bedrooms. Separate suites of rooms, even. And this is often a point of romance and intimacy in a historical – when they have that, “I know most couples sleep in separate rooms, but we’re going to share” discussion. The idea of separate chambers just being the antithesis of romance.

But as I’ve … ahem… matured, I’ve come to know a lot of very loving couples who sleep in separate beds, or even separate rooms, for a variety of reasons. Maybe one snores. Maybe one is a restless sleeper. Maybe one likes to stay up late watching TV and the other doesn’t. Maybe one is nursing a child at all hours of the night. Maybe one chases her husband out of the room so she can write in peace, and half the time the poor guy just falls asleep on the sofa. (Sorry Mr. Dare!)

Seriously – the act of sleeping together isn’t really as simple as it sounds. It takes practice, and sometimes life makes it impractical. When Mr. Dare and I first started living together, he would roll over and clock me with an elbow – because he wasn’t used to me being there. I had bruises. We got it figured out eventually, but then (as a side effect of all that time in bed together, I guess) we had babies. And they were always in our room, or demanding one of us stay in theirs…

Do I have a point to this ramble? Ah, yes.

Do you know of, or have you been in, a loving relationship that thrives on separate beds? Or do you see them as the antithesis of romance?

Still breathing, still writing… I’ve given up on updating that page meter, because I passed the 400 page/100K word mark long ago, and now my heart sinks with every page I write, knowing that it means I’ll need to cut a page somewhere else. But the end is in sight.

And this weekend, I’m going for a cruise on this ship so I can hopefully go through and fix all the highlighted lines that read, “Do something something with the sail!”

It’s a battle cruise with four ships and cannons and everything. And we’re allowed to bring booze. How cool is that?

Okay, so I’m the last person in America to see this movie. But I’m so glad I finally did – and NOT because I look anything like Amy Adams, as Sara Lindsey seems to think (although perhaps I share her character’s goofiness), but because it was the cinematic equivalent of what I’m trying to do when I write romance.

My books are silly. They’re filled with cliche’d phrases and plot elements, and (in)conveniently timed interruptions. It’s a self-conscious silliness. As a genre, romance asks the reader to accept a lot of improbable situations. It makes me think of the White Queen telling Alice that she too could believe six impossible things before breakfast, if only she practiced. Some writers are able to sketch such vivid pictures of their world and characters, that I can believe those six impossible things. With other books, I simply skim past my disbelief and try to enjoy the story for what it is: a modern fairy tale.

I’m not such an accomplished historian or student of human nature that I could fall into the first category. So my goal is never to ask the reader to suspend disbelief. You’re encouraged to disbelieve the absurdity of the situations in my books – my characters can hardly believe it themselves. Laugh with my books, laugh at my books – I don’t really care. But while you’re laughing, I’m going to sneak some real emotion in there.

This is why Enchanted makes even the most jaded hearts melt – it wins the viewer over with self-deprecation and full-on silliness. No, don’t believe in fairy tales, the movie insists. They’re ridiculous and impossible. But love is real, and there’s no shame in wanting to believe in that. First the humor disarms, then the romance enchants. And it works!

That’s exactly what I want to do with my books. I’m not asking you to believe that all hoydens are plucky, all earls are good-looking, and all virgins are orgasmic with the right guy. I’m just asking you to believe in love. Because we all want to, deep down.

You know that feeling you get when you’re **thiisss** close to winning at chess, or to untangling a very large, very uncooperative knot? Sort of itchy and excited and tense all at once – you can see the nine or ten moves it will take to get there, but in order to complete them you’ve got to concentrate and shush those around you and frown really hard, or else you’ll lose the sequence and that way lies much weeping and gnashing of teeth?

This is pretty much where I’m at with Surrender of a Siren. **Thiiisss** close to finishing the draft and terrified to break my concentration. What little of it I can gather, at any rate.

To that end, I’m going to be a bad blogger and commenter over the next few weeks. Uh, just like I have been for the past few weeks. Sorry!

Goals for the new year?
*Maintain tenuous hold on sanity.
*Walk more to prevent brain atrophy (I read this in an in-flight magazine). And my brain is atrophying at an alarming rate. I shake my head and things rattle in there.
*Go to England.

That’s all I can muster the concentration for right now.