Tessa Dare

With the Banditas!

I’m being interviewed by Anna Campbell today over at Romance Bandits. Drop in for the chance to win some Amazon bucks!

Latebreaking news –
Please join the SQUEE chorus for the following FanLit alums who are Golden Heart finalists!
Courtney Milan (Historical, Breath of Honor)
Pamela Bolton-Holifield (Regency Historical, Lost in Love)
Darcy Burke (Regency Historical, Glorious)
Liese Sherwood-Fabre (Strong Romantic Elements, Heads Up, St. Anthony)

And the following FanLit pubbed author participants who are RITA finalists:
Anna Campbell (a double final!! in Regency Historical for Untouched and Claiming the Courtesan)
Laura Lee Gurhke (Historical, And Then He Kissed Her)
Toni Blake (Single Title, Tempt Me Tonight)
Julia Quinn (Regency Historical, The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever)
Shana Galen (Historical, Blackthorne’s Bride)

I hope those lists keep growing!
And congratulations to everyone who entered this year – being eligible to enter the GH is an accomplishment in and of itself.
San Francisco is going to be awesome!

So last weekend, I came down with a nasty migraine. Once some meds had started to kick in, and the pain dulled to the point where I could better tolerate the flickering light of the TV than I could cope with my own boredom, I flipped channels and found The Sound of Music playing on cable. Ah, what better to soothe an aching cranium than the sweet voices of the Von Trapp children?

But something strange happened as I watched the movie for the umpteenth time since my own childhood – for the very first time, I found myself sympathizing with the Baroness. I know, I know – the Baroness!

I mean, she is the underhanded, witchy Other Woman figure, who would make a horrid mother and send the Von Trapp children packing off to boarding school – and she probably can’t even carry a tune… but still. I felt sorry for her. There’s no denying she’s beautiful and worldly and intelligent, and she really had some crackling chemistry with the Captain. She’s a widow who’s been jaded by wealth and loss, like so many of our favorite romance characters, and I couldn’t help but feel that a little love from a handsome, worldly, intelligent man could make all the difference in her life. And yet – in swoops the irrepressible guitar-playing virgin half her age, fresh from the convent. How can she possibly compete?

What does this say about me, that I’m suddenly siding with the Baroness? That I’m jaded myself? Getting old, or ahem, maturing? Was my brain just addled with migraine meds?

Do you ever find yourself sympathizing with the Other Woman?

And…I hear it’s Golden Heart notification day today! If you get The Call, please come squee here posthaste!

Thanks, Gillian, for letting me know the RWR article was already available! I’d been planning to post on my blog about it. They really got the issue out early this month!

For anyone who hasn’t seen it yet, I have an article in the April issue of Romance Writers Report about fan fiction and the romance community. It’s a very general overview of fan fiction for those who may be unfamiliar with the topic, and I also write about how I and several other authors wrote fanfic before getting published.

So yes, before I wrote historical romance, I wrote Pride and Prejudice fan fiction. And I guess it’s only fair to give you all some links to it. With caveats, of course.

First, by writing and enjoying P&P fanfic, in no way did I ever mean to insinuate that Austen’s original novel could be improved, equaled, matched, lengthened, enriched, etc. Admittedly, there’s a certain amount of hubris inherent to writing JAFF (Jane Austen fan fiction), and I enjoyed challenging myself to come up with scenes and dialogue that might be worthy of her magnificent characters. Of course, I didn’t – but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t fun trying.

Second, there are many, many instances in the stories where I use Austen’s lines verbatim–this is not plagiarism, it’s intentional allusion to the original work. In the places I posted these stories, the readers are all very familiar with the original text, and re-using (or tweaking or reattributing) lines from P&P was often a sort of “inside joke”. I wanted to have fun with Austen’s original words amongst fellow fans who would recognize them, not try to present her words as my own.

Third, please take historical inaccuracies with a grain of salt. I’m still learning now, years later, about the historical period, and at the time I wrote these stories (purely for fun!), my understanding was cursory indeed. This is evident in that my very first fanfic came out of a challenge posted on a fansite to write a story in which the P&P characters play a variant of hide-and-seek called “Sardines”. If you’ve never played this, all the players end up squeezed together like sardines in a tin. Of course, they did not have tinned sardines in the Regency – they did not have tins at all. But we were just having fun, because we’d read that the actors in the 2005 P&P film played Sardines in the house that served as their set. And when I wrote Goddess of the Hunt, I couldn’t resist writing a hide-and-seek scene to pay homage to that story, my not-so-illustrious beginning.

Last, my voice in these stories is very different from my voice now. I was consciously striving for an Austen-esque voice, and as a result, these read more like a traditional Regency than the single-title historical romances I’m writing for Ballantine, which are faster-paced and have a more modern feel to the dialog and syntax. There’s also no sex in the fanfic. None whatsoever, sorry. A tiny bit of kissing. Whereas my forthcoming novels are pretty sexy.

These were amateur stories I wrote for fun, to share with a few friends. Fanfic was one of the ways I found to connect with other people who love and admire Austen’s work as much as I do, and through writing fanfic, I came to appreciate Austen’s genius in an entirely new way. It really allowed me to crawl inside the book and learn from it as I never had before–much like art students make copies of masterworks. Of course, these are bad, bad copies. Like, if I’m an art student copying the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, I’m working in Crayola fingerpaint. But it was all in good fun, and you’re welcome to read the stories if you like.

My fanfic pen name was Vangie, and I posted stories on a couple of different sites.

Here’s the one long fanfic I wrote: In Essentials (Much as it ever was), which is a sort of alternate retelling of P&P. I started by changing two premises to P&P. When the story opens, Elizabeth has already visited Pemberley with her Aunt and Uncle (and therefore seen Mr. Darcy’s home, heard the praise of his housekeeper, etc.), and Georgiana (Darcy’s sister) never went to Ramsgate and was never urged to elope by Mr. Wickham. So basically, Elizabeth is predisposed to like Mr. Darcy, and no one has reason to suspect Mr. Wickham. Basically, I tried to take P&P and put it in a blender, then rearrange all the pieces to make a new story-one in which Elizabeth got to play a more active role. The whole story is posted at the Derbyshire Writers Guild on Austen.com. If you’d care to download and print it out for your very own, there’s a lovely JAFFer named Ellen who makes beautiful PDFs, and you can download In Essentials from this site (scroll down, they’re alphabetical). There are lots of other great stories there, too – if you care to explore, some of my favorites are Intermezzo by Abigail R and Curiosity and Correspondence by MariaFaith.

Before I wrote this longer fic, I wrote some short stories on a fansite for the 2005 movie version, called Longbourn Loungers. The site is not very active anymore, and as I’m writing this post tonight, the server is not responding consistently. But if the link works for you, you can see all the stories I posted there by going to this page. This board was my introduction to fanfic, and these were some of my very first stories I’d ever shown to anyone. There’s some very purple prose on display, as well as some stilted dialog and a strange proliferation of exclamation marks. !!! But there were also some settings and phrasings I still really like and have found ways to tweak for my novels. Anyhow, you can see how much I was learning. For example, if you read the story called, “A Most Invigorating Afternoon”, you can clearly see I’d never heard the term headhopping, LOL. But I still like that little vignette. The very first one I posted (the Sardines story) was called, “Two Unwilling Participants”.

So anyway, there it is for you to read, laugh with, laugh at, or completely ignore as you please.

Goodness, that was long. I will only add, God bless you.

So, who else reads or writes fanfic? Care to post links?

Pop quiz: What do these things have in common?

Latin conjugations
Cranial Nerves
Millipedes and other creepy-crawlies
Geometry
Snow and other things that are cold
Multiples of seven

No, they’re not the categories on Jeopardy tonight. They’re all mental cold showers – the topics that heroes in either my or my CPs’ books think about when they’re trying not to think about ravishing the heroine.

Now, I love to write and read these little bits, where the hero is heroically reining in his desire by reciting the Gettysburg Address backwards or whatnot…they’re actually great ways to work in characterization and backstory. But I’m wondering, do guys really do this stuff in real life? Do girls? How do your favorite heroes (in RL, your own books, or others’) divert their attention?

Here’s another Tuesday topic Vagabond Lindsey suggested a while back.

In my second book, Surrender of a Siren, there’s a scene where the hero, Gray, fesses up to a slew of misdeeds in an effort to discourage imprudent affection on the heroine’s part. You know, he’s your typical bad-boy hero–plenty of pleasure-seeking and profit-seeking in his past. So part of this confession involves his sexual history. Which is considerable.

When I originally wrote the scene, I had him estimate the number of his lovers. I wanted it to be a reasonably shocking number, because his entire purpose in saying it was to shock the heroine. He’s not bragging, he’s not proud of it. He’s rather squicked by his own pattern of behavior.

However, my CPs, in their infinite wisdom, counseled against actual quantification. We argued it back and forth, but I eventually came around to their side. They thought a number might be too effective in squicking not only the heroine, but the readers, and they wouldn’t be able to get past it and fall in love with the hero. So I revised the scene to make it more vague, along the lines of “a lot”. (BTW, when I read this chapter on Ervin’s blog, it seemed to confirm that I’d made the right call.)

But then I keep thinking of that scene in Four Weddings and a Funeral, where Andie MacDowell’s character rattles off the details of all her thirty-some lovers over lunch with Hugh Grant. The scene is funny and actually endearing in a way, and it’s a nice change from the usual in that the woman’s far out-played the man. What do you think, does the scene make her character more or less likeable? What’s the tally’s effect on dear, sweet Charlie (Hugh Grant)?

While I think I made the right call for this book, I reserve the right to attempt something like that scene in the future. Perhaps with a heroine instead of the hero…

What do you think about disclosure of sexual histories, in fiction or real life? Do you want to hear about every partner your S.O. has ever had, or would you rather just get the vague estimate? Perhaps blissful ignorance is best?

Obviously, modern concern about STDs puts a whole new spin on the discussion. Not that they didn’t have STDs in the Regency – I do make a mention of that in SOAS, too.

Last night, Mr. Dare and I (and like a billion other screaming people) rocked out with the Foo-Fighters at The Forum, and it was amazing. So today, I’m all about the rockstars. Here’s a little Friday footage for your viewing pleasure. (I like to do these fangirl photo spreads in black-and-white, ’cause it all feels a bit classier and less adolescent that way. Yeah, that’s what I tell myself.)

Here we have the one-man foo-fighting force that is Dave Grohl. (I think he wore that shirt last night!)

And here, a new addition to my crush collection – the Florida punk power of Against Me! (They played the first set last night and were flippin’ awesome.)

My current pretty-boy altrock obsession would be Brandon Boyd of Incubus. (And he’s really not that much younger than me, I swear!)

But before all these, there was Bruce. I sigh for Bruce. He’s still the hottest of them all.

I’ve heard that you can’t sell a contemporary romance with a rockstar hero? Why the heck not? Are there any out there anyhow?
Who’s your rockstar crush, past or present?

Toby, the hero of my current book (oh, and right now I think I’m leaning toward A Lady of Persuasion as a working title, in case you’re wondering) has something most romance heroes don’t – a mother. And she’s a mother who isn’t vindictive, backstabbing, jealous, drug-addicted, murderous, manipulative or otherwise evil… she’s just a very strong, intelligent woman who cares deeply for all her children, and she and Toby have a very close, affectionate relationship.

So be honest – is this an automatic turn-off?

I mean, there are reasons I need my hero to have this relationship, both for his characterization and plot. And he’s not overly dependent on her–she doesn’t meddle in his romantic attachments or ever come between him and the heroine. I want to make sure I walk the line without crossing it, though. So I’m trying to think of other romances where the heroes have strong-yet-affectionate mothers who actually play a role in their lives…and I’m coming up kinda empty. There are the Bridgertons, of course. And the Carsingtons have both parents living, right? Any others?

And what do you prefer? Do you love a RL guy who’s close to his mom, or does it make you suspicious he’ll always put you second? Any particular incidents that crossed the line from Responsible Son territory to Relationship Reject? I’m looking back on my own relationships, and I’m realizing all my bf’s have always been pretty close to their moms…interesting.

Here’s my life lately:

Dareling One: Knock knock.
Me: Who’s there?
Dareling One: Banana.
Me: Banana who?
Dareling One: Banana apple. Hahahahaha!!! Laugh, Mommy, laugh!
Me: (laughing feebly) Okay…
Dareling One: Knock knock.
Me: Who’s there?
Dareling One: Apple.
Me: Apple who?
Dareling One: Apple orange. Hahahahahahahahhah!! Laugh, Mommy!
Me: Sigh…
Dareling One: Knock knock. Knock knock. KNOCK KNOCK!!!

Yes, Dareling One has entered that golden age of child development where she can grasp the structure of the knock-knock joke, but not the humor. When do kids figure that part out?

Please say soon.