Historical ROMANCE

Kalen Hughes has a very thought-provoking post over at History Hoydens about the difference between historical romance and historical romance, which you should read.

Caveat: I say all this as someone who really, really tries to get things right. Which is why I’m in England on a research trip right now. And I know that sounds sexy, but what it means is that I spent two hours today taking literally hundreds of photographs of the period maps in Bristol’s City Museum, and I will spend the vast majority of tomorrow at the Bristol Records Office, reading the City Recorder’s notebooks and notes from the Petty Sessions for the years in question. It’s why I spend hours with the Oxford English Dictionary and the Oxford Historical Thesaurus in front of me when I’m in the revision stage, checking hundreds of words; and why I ask Franzeca Drouin to look over my manuscripts for a second eye to accuracy once I’ve given it my very best shot, because I know I still miss stuff.

(Caveat the second: In my upcoming book, my heroine wears night-rails not made from linen. But she has them specially made for a particular purpose; in fact, she usually wears linen. As I found a few records of night-rails of non-linen-fabric for the super-wealthy, this fell into the category of historically possible attire, although it’s not historically average. She could have done so. She was motivated to do so. It fit the story for her to do so.)

In any event, Kalen makes the following assertion:

To me, it seems ridiculous to even bother writing “historical fiction” (be it romance, mystery, whathaveyou) if the “historical” part is optional.

I don’t think that the “historical” part of my books is “optional.” I work very, very hard at it. But I also don’t think that the history is the point of my books, either. Or, rather: I think the past is a vehicle for the present.

When Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter, he wasn’t writing an indictment of Puritan hypocrisy. When Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible, he wasn’t trying to villify the people who ran the Salem Witch trials. And I am not trying to say that I am the next Hawthorne or Miller. But neither Hawthorne nor Miller were “ridiculous” even though they weren’t always historically accurate, and were not striving for historical accuracy. It would be bizarre to condemn The Crucible on the grounds that it was a wallpaper historical courtroom drama. That’s because Hawthorne and Miller weren’t trying to write period pieces. They were using the past as a safe space to discuss the present.

I write in the late 1830s/early 1840s. I do so not because I am completely enamored of early Victorian times, or because I think it is sexy or because I think that it has pretty clothing (because, actually, the clothing of the era is quite ugly). I’ve explained this elsewhere in greater detail, but I write in a time period where everything is changing: the notion of society, the meaning of community, even what things have value. Towns are breaking up; the industrial revolution is hitting hard, and nobody knows what tomorrow will look like. It’s a time of enormous uncertainty.

In other words, it sounds a lot like modern times.

Today, we know that the industrial revolution wasn’t as horrible as some feared (Mr. Milan, who is a Luddite, will contest this). We know that the democratization of society and the erosion of class boundaries was a good thing. We know that giving women more freedom worked out okay. It didn’t destroy the family. It didn’t lead to anarchy. My readers know that; I know that. And so the historical setting is a safe place to explore what it means when society, culture, community, and even basic notions of value all change drastically, with that unknown future hovering on the horizon, waiting to swallow your child’s inheritance.

I do a lot of research–hundreds of hours for every book. When departing (or even appearing to depart, which is the bigger problem) from history, I agonize over the questions for weeks. I care about being historically accurate, to the extent that it is consistent with the story I am trying to tell. But I’m not ashamed to admit that if it comes down to a question between the accuracy of the history, and the theme and message and feel of my book for the modern reader, I will pick the theme and message and feel of my book every single time.

I’m not writing period pieces. And that’s not ridiculous.

Chased by Cows!

Today was an adventure.

For those of you who do not know, I am in England. On a research trip. I’m spending a few days in the small town where the book I am writing takes place–in the month when the book I am writing takes place–and it has already been super-incredibly-valuable for a thousand and one different reasons.

The plan for today was to take a walk. My hero is in the countryside. He takes walks. So does my heroine. (In fact, they take more than one walk together.) And luckily, when I popped into the tourist information center yesterday, there was a handy-dandy guidebook describing 13 walks of varying length, all starting from the center of town. Score!

So I picked up one of them. Before I start, I have to make a confession: I do not navigate well. In fact, I have the worst anti-navigational system ever. In part, this is because I don’t know directions of any kind. In part, this is because I don’t like taking directions of any kind. And in part, it’s just sheer cussedness on my part. I wish I could explain it. My husband believes, firmly, that this is all a product of my imagination and if I would just try it would all work out. Ha ha ha ha ha.

In any event, this guidebook is lovely and wonderful, but the “directions” for the walks look like this: “Turn right between the large stones to walk down Mill Lane (not signed). On reaching the lane at the bottom turn right and walk uphill, where the road turns sharp right you take the stile on the left, cross the field to follow the hedge on your right downhill to a stile at the bottom.”

Which sounds reasonable in theory. Except telling Courtney to turn between the large stones to walk down an unsigned lane, and then to take the stile on the left where the road turns sharp right… This is not so much a good idea. Questions arise during the actual attempt. Questions such as:

“Are those stones sufficiently large?”

“Is that a sharp right turn?”

“How far am I supposed to be walking?”

The distance between some of these directions varied from 200 meters to, oh, 2 miles. Without demarcation. In any event, I got completely and utterly lost, about seven or eight times, and it was only with the help of three separate people I met on the way that I eventually managed to complete the walk. But it was all good. I had food. I had water. I can handle anything so long as I am provisioned with apples! (If I am not, I turn evil. Mr. Milan can confirm.)

In any event, once I found myself on the way again, I had these directions to follow: “Look for a signpost and some steps on the left going up the bank to a stile. Once over the stile go half left to the far corner of the field where you cross a stile next to an old gate.”

If you’re thinking this crossing field stuff is a little weird, since it’s someone’s property, don’t worry. There are signs that clearly mark the crossings as “public footpath,” and so property owners don’t get all bent out of shape if they see you.

The thing is, somebody needed to tell the cows that.

I know. I know. You are thinking, “Courtney, you are such a city girl. Cows are placid. Cows are sweet. Cows are not dangerous.” I know this. I realize this. In fact, as I started across the field–and as the cows, 20 yards away, began to amble towards me, I told myself this. I said, “Courtney, the cows are just curious. They are coming closer to have a look. Or perhaps, they are just coming this way because they are hungry. In any event, cows are not dangerous. You have nothing to worry about.”

Like I said. Somebody needs to tell the cows.

There were a lot of cows. Cows are very big. I realize that is a stupid thing to say, but one can comprehend that a cow is a massive animal, and then one can know that a cow is a massive animal. So here I am, these cows walking towards me in one giant herd, thinking to myself that cows are completely safe, even though they weigh thousands of pounds and could  stampede me to death without even noticing I was there.

The cows begin to run towards me.

Now, I realize that cows are not exactly considered fast animals. Horses are fast. Cheetahs are fast. My little dog, who I miss very much, is fast. Cows? Are rather on the slow side. But so is Courtney, and besides, Courtney is sitting there saying to herself, “Don’t run, it’s a bad idea, don’t run.” I don’t actually know if that’s true for cows. It’s true for bears, though, and as you may have noticed, I am a city girl.

So, hundreds (well, tens) of cows are running towards me, and I’m thinking, “La la la, cows are safe, la la la, I am not going to run away from cows because they are completely safe, la la la.”

Then the cows start to surround me. No, really. They flank me on both sides, and they’re running to do so. There is tossing of heads. There is direct eye contact. There is lowering of heads in my direction. I don’t have a lot of experience with cows, but none of these things are sounding good for Courtney. At this point, I realize that while these fine beasts are about half cows, the other half are calves, and I start to rethink my chant of “cows are safe.” Sure, cows are safe, but aren’t all mothers supposed to be vicious? And… I had beef yesterday. They can smell it on me.

I am still not running. I am walking very, very, very quickly. Luckily, the field was not wide, or I am sure the cows would have done for me. I got to the stile on the other side and scrambled across.

Then I turned around. The cows were all staring at me. The word “bovine” usually is coupled with “placid” and “unperturbable.” Not these cows. Every single placid brown cow eye was narrowed in my direction, promising dire retribution should I return.

I stood, my heart pounding on the other side of the fence. And then I looked at the cows. They looked at me. I shook my fist at them, and said the only thing that came to mind: “Bad cows!”

They were not amused.

And then I snapped their picture. If you look closely, you can see hints of smoke, trailing from their nostrils.

Courtney’s Quick Guide to the First Amendment

I realize that there’s a lot of confusion about what the First Amendment actually protects.* So I thought it would be useful to post a quick and dirty test, so you could figure out if someone on the Internet was stomping all over your First Amendment rights.

Step One. Identify the believable threat the person has employed.

The threat has to be believable–that is, hyperbole (“I’m so mad, I could flamebroil you!”) and idiocy (“My brother’s dog’s girlfriend’s cousin’s lawyer is the county prosecutor, and he’s gonna throw you in jail!”) don’t count.

Step Two. Ask yourself, how bad is this threat?

“If you do not admit that Stephen Colbert is the best presidential candidate, I will have you executed by the government.”
“If you don’t stop arguing with me, I will throw you in jail for five years.”
“If you don’t stop criticizing my company, I will sue you for $400,000.”

Yup. These threats, if believable, are bad. They would have chilling effects. They have real power behind them. You need a non-quick guide to the first amendment, and you need it fast!

“If you don’t stop arguing with me, I will not read your next book.”
“If you do not admit that Stephen Colbert is the best presidential candidate, I will taunt you a second time.”
“If you don’t stop criticizing my company, I will compare you to a Nazi.”

These threats are threats to do precisely what someone has the right to do in the first place. In other words, suck it up.

Those who know about law will recognize that I have sailed right over basically every legal question, like the tricky question of state action, and any actual standards for recognizing categories of protected and unprotected speech. But those who know the law also realize, through repeated application of palm to face, that 98.6% of Internet free speech “violations” are, in fact, of the “taunt you a second time” variety, and so despite the lack of connection to case law, this is a pretty good test.

—–

* The only thing more confusing than some of the free speech doctrines (one part of the first amendment) are establishment clause doctrines (another bit). Luckily, the establishment clause is so confusing that random people on the Internet can’t figure out how to accuse each other of violating it, and so no quick guide is necessary.

A rant about goals

Here’s the thing. People are different. Very different. What works for one person doesn’t work for another.

Today I saw, for the fourth time in a week, someone saying to someone else, “You shouldn’t make a goal of getting published. You should only make goals that are in your control. So, you can make a goal of ‘I will finish my novel,’ or ‘I will submit this for publication,’ but you can’t make a goal that you will get published.”

Excuse me while I put on my cranky pants.

Why not? True, if you make goals that are outside of your control, you might be disappointed, and that’s too bad. But what the heck is the point of a goal? If the point of having goals is to be motivated, you need to know how you work. If you are the kind of person who gives up (or who is set back) when you face disappointment, then yes, make rational goals so you can cheer yourself on.

Me, I’m not. If I fail to make my goals, I shrug, because I know they contain an aspirational element. But my goals are there to motivate me, and let me tell you, back before I was published, I was not motivated by the prospect of sending fifteen queries to agents. That would have been a sucky goal for me, because it meant nothing to me. I didn’t want something I could check off a box so I could feel like I was making forward progress. I wanted something I could strive for. It wasn’t the prospect of submitting my book to a publisher that made me stay up until 3 AM some of those mornings, polishing scenes.

My goal was that I wanted to be published (in fact, my goal was more irrational than mere publication). Was this a goal that was in my control? No. But I worked like hell for it, and for a damned good reason. That’s how I work. That’s how I motivate myself. For me, setting piddly little goals that are in my control feels like… an office job. “Today, I will send five letters.” This does not motivate me.

Pfft. Today, I will do everything I can do to make my dreams come true, not chase down some arbitrary predetermined thing that I know I can do. (True confession: I see little point in making a goal of doing things that I already know I can do. I realize people differ, which is why I’m good with people who make rational goals–I just don’t want them telling me, and people like me, that what they’re doing is crazy. Of course it is crazy–but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.)

I have goals for the future that are insane–I know I will never get them. I have goals for the future that are somewhat possible. I can’t think of a single thing that I call a “goal” that is readily doable.

So, seriously. Don’t edit other people’s goals by telling them they aren’t good goals. And if someone is editing your goals, and it feels weird, just tell them to get out of your hair. I’m not saying that you have to write your goals all irrational-like, like me, but for heaven’s sake, if your goal is to get published, and someone tells you that’s not a good goal, the proper response is: “Why not? It’s what I want.” And don’t let them push you around. You know you better than they do.

Rant over. For now.

Accuracy, believability, and the modern reader

I am in the very, very tentative stages of writing my fourth book. As in, I am working on the second scene as we speak. (I have written more than that, but I am going back to the second scene and adding in detail.)

This book is taking place in a tiny village in England. It is not some made-up hamlet; it is an actual village. In any event, the hero–who was born in this tiny village, but who has been surrounded by the hubbub of London and other, louder places for the last two decades–is standing in the middle of the Market Place, and observing to himself that nothing has changed. Part of his observation includes him making a mental wager with himself that the market stalls–big heavy benches made of wood, with tile roofs overhead–haven’t changed since medieval times.

Of course, we know that everything is about to change for him, when the heroine, who is very new, swans by.

But I wrote this line about the market stalls being medieval and then stopped. You see, to a modern reader–and especially to a modern American reader–I’m afraid that will come off as unbelievable at worst, or weird hyperbole at best. That’s because we are used to impermanence. Old houses are houses from the 1900s–maybe dating from the 1860s. There are old houses. Maybe, we understand old houses.

But market stalls? Those are flimsy things that get erected and then torn down the next day. They aren’t made to last ten years, let alone a hundred. It doesn’t make sense to a modern reader to have market stalls that have been there since medieval times.

The Medieval Shambles (photograph by Frank James Allen; now public domain)

But, in point of fact, these market stalls did date from medieval times. The medieval stalls were in use up until at least the early 1900s. Think about that: four hundred and fifty years of using the same market stalls.

My hero would have no way of actually dating the stalls. He’s not an expert in medieval construction. He can’t say “these date from the 1450s,” and it would be awkward authorial intervention if he did.

I thought about sliding this under the rug so it turns into “much older than I am” rather than “medieval stalls still in use.” But I think that the “medieval stalls still in use on a biweekly basis” captures the character of how slowly this little town changes in a way that “old” simply doesn’t. My heroine is not just jolting my hero out of his ways; she is unmooring him from traditions that are literally centuries old. Those centuries matter to the story, and the whole point (well, one of the whole points) of setting it in this village is to give my hero’s inertia mass.

And so my job as an author is to convey the reader into that moment, to make the reality feel natural instead of awkward. My job as an author is to make  the modern reader forget that she lives in a world where the things that she uses will be relegated to the junk heap after three or four years. My job as an author is to make the reader forget about a world that is IKEA-disposable–and to do it all so quietly that she doesn’t even notice it’s happening.

I do not yet know how to do this. Maybe I will figure it out before I reach the end of the book.

Titles so awesome, they used ’em twice

So, first things first: the winners of my giveaway!

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms: Jami G.
The Demon’s Covenant: Gillian
The Knife of Never Letting Go: Aja

Today’s blog post is about titles that get used more than once. When I was trying to come up with a title for my second book, I knew I wanted something that evoked my first one. That is, I wanted something that had the same structure (Blank by Blank), that was also a subtle play on words, and that had a kind of sexy element to it. Thus I came up with Trial by Desire–a title the book really grew into, in ways that I hadn’t anticipated when I first started writing it, since you can take pretty much any of the definitions of “Trial” in the dictionary, starting with “the determination of … the righteousness of his cause, by a combat between the accuser and accused” through “the fact or condition of being tried by suffering or temptation,” and everything in between.

In other words, it was the perfect title. But when I checked Amazon, there was already a book called Trial by Desire–written by Elisa Curry, published in 1984. What was I  to do? I shrugged, figured that the book was no longer commercially available, and that was that.

The same thing happened with my February, 2011 release, which is titled Unveiled. Unveiled was the perfect title–absolutely perfect. I had sat with friends for hours, rejecting one title after another. I wanted something that suggested mystery, spotlessness, pristine beauty–and the hint of something to come. When a friend of mine suggested Unveiled, I knew it was the right title.

This was more problematic. When I checked Amazon, there were actually a number of books called Unveiled–one about the hidden lives of nuns, one about women in Islam. One of them was even a historical romance, written by Kristina Cook in 2005–an author (and an all-round wonderful person–I hadn’t met her at the time I chose the title, but did shortly afterwards) who is still writing today, under Kristi Astor.

Ultimately, I decided to just go with it. Our names sound different enough–and there was enough of a time-gap–that in mass market, the likelihood of confusion was small.

But sometimes books end up with the same titles even though they are released within months of each other. One example of that is Maggie Robinson’s Mistress by Mistake–a fabulous, funny, extraordinarily sexy book about a woman who goes to visit her fallen sister, only to be mistaken for a courtesan herself. This book happened to be released within months of Susan Gee Heino’s Mistress by Mistake–a fabulous, funny, extraordinarily sexy book about a woman who gets tipsy in celebration, and accidentally ends up in bed with a man who thinks she is a servant. They are both debut books, both quite excellent, and both really awesome.

Still, I know some people wondered: How on earth does this happen? Easy–Maggie Robinson is published by Kensington. Susan Gee Heino is published by Berkley. Neither knows the titles the other is planning on using, until the catalogs come out–at which point it is too late to change the title, because accounts are placing orders and the covers are already finished. Sometimes, lightning strikes. What are you going to do?

First, you can shrug your shoulders and say, “oh, well.”

Or second, I can give away a copy of both books–which is what I’m going to do. So if you want a copy of either Mistress by Mistake–by Maggie Robinson or Susan Gee Heino–let me know in the comments, and I’ll draw a winner early next week.

P.S. Maggie Robinson’s second book is titled Mistress by Midnight, and I am eagerly awaiting its arrival in January of 2011. Of course, I just got wind that Nicola Cornick’s December 2010 title is Mistress by Midnight. What can I say? Mistress titles are all the rage!

Giveaway: Three books you should read, today

This book has a companion post, which will go up soon, called “three awesome books you should read tomorrow,” in which I will gloat about having read early copies of some of the most-anticipated releases.

But today, I’m going to talk about three truly incredible–and I mean utterly mind-blowing–books that I read in the last month. These books utterly blew me away. And because none of these books is a romance, I don’t know any of the authors. The closest you get is Sarah Rees Brennan, who I (a) met once at a booksigning, and (b) shares an agent with me.

Here you go: incredible books you should read, today.

1. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, by N.K. Jemisin.

Okay, I did meet N.K. Jemisin at the Romantic Times booksigning–I went up to her just before the doors opened to babble freakishly and demand a signed copy. This book utterly blew me away. I have read a lot of fantasy–a lot. I’ve been reading fantasy since before I started reading romance. And I have never read anything like this. It winks at the fantasy tropes, and then it turns them around.

This book is about a really awesome woman who is summoned by her grandfather, who happens to be the most powerful man in existence, and told that in a few weeks she will either be the ruler of the not-so-free world, or her cousins will have killed her.

It’s got plot. It’s got characterizations. It’s got romance. And the romance it has–between the main character, who describes herself as someone who is sometimes mistaken for a boy, and the oldest god in the universe, who might actually kill the heroine, just because–is phenomenal. Normally I do not like the “he is so powerful, and he might kill her!” thing because extreme power imbalances between hero and heroine get my skeeves up. But this book is not one where I ever, ever feel that Yeine, the heroine is powerless. Not because she is so almighty and grand and imbued with special snowflake skills and sweet-smelling blood. No; it is because Yeine is empowered, even when she feels most helpless. Love, love, love and adore this book a million times over.

I’m not sure which books to compare this to, because it is like none of them. All I will say is that I put it in the category of Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind, and Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora. It is nothing like either of those books, though, except that it is utterly brilliant. If this is the future of fantasy, I am giddy.

Which is why I have now purchased 4 copies of this book: one in e-format, another in print, so Mr. Milan could read it (he says that it gets 4 1/2 stars, but 3 1/2 Sherman Tanks, it having girly stuff)–and that copy has since been given to my sister–then the signed copy at RT, which no, you can’t have, and then another copy at the bookstore the other day because it looked pretty on the shelf–that copy is the copy I am giving away at the end of this post.

2. The Demon’s Covenant by Sarah Rees Brennan.

Okay, so I blogged briefly about the first book in this series. And that first book pretty much kicked ass. It was full of awesome. It made me weep. For reasons that I will not disclose, because they are spoilery, and reasons that I will disclose: because Sarah Rees Brennan is a genius.

The Demon’s Covenant, the sequel, is even better. I did not think it was possible. But it is. The book is so, so brilliant. It is about a girl, named Mae, whose mother is a lawyer and works long, long hours, and whose father ignores them. Naturally, she and her brother get into trouble. You might think that Mae’s pink hair and sassy T-shirts would indicate the sort of trouble she gets into. But no, it’s not that kind of trouble. Jamie’s peer pressure is from magicians: “See, Jamie, you could be cool like us! All you’d have to do to get unlimited power is to kill a few people.”

Needless to say, Mae is more than a little unsettled by this–especially since she’s already sacrificed a great deal to keep Jamie magician-free. And so naturally, she calls the quiet, unassuming fellow at the bookstore, who might also be a bit of a psychopathic killer, to come help.

I started reading this book over dinner. I had a deadline and stuff. I did not stop, and then I had to stay up until 2 AM. Curse you, Sarah Rees Brennan. Curse you, and your incredible skills. Everything I can say about this book is a spoiler, and so all I will say is: Mmmmfffff!!

Mae is the protagonist of this book. And I wasn’t sure about that at first, because I loved Nick–creepy, odd, weird Nick–so much in that first book that I was really frightened to leave his completely unsettling point of view.

Also, I am shipping Alan so hard it is not even funny. I am not even sure what that says about me, but he is such an earnest, geeky little Slytherin, and that so hits every button I have. I am not sure who I am shipping Alan with, but it has to be someone awesome. Like maybe Sin. Why, oh why, do I have to wait for that book?

I bought this book in e-copy. Then I went to the store and I bought another two. One of those I will force upon Mr. Milan. (One of the reasons I married Mr. Milan is the ease of forcing books upon him.) The other, I will give away. Again at the end of this post!

3. The Knife of Never Letting Go, by Patrick Ness.

I don’t know how I heard of this book, but the title intrigued me and so I picked it up. The first three pages–written in this colloquial almost stream-of-consciousness style–kind of annoyed me. Then I started getting into the narrator’s head, and it all just kind of worked.

And oh, how it worked.

The narrator of this book is almost thirteen years old (or is he?). And he is looking forward to becoming a man in a month’s time. In the interim, he has chores to contend with and his very annoying, stupid puppy, named Manchee, who he said he did not want to get.

His dog talks. Manchee is not very smart for a dog–my dog is much, much smarter than Manchee, but Manchee is actually a ruddy good dog, as we come to discover. Todd lives in a place called Prentisstown, which is the only settlement on an entire planet. A little more than a decade ago, there was a bit of biological warfare. The germs that were spread made two things happen: animals all talk (although they’re not very smart), and men–and I do mean, men, not women, all began to broadcast their thoughts, all around them. There’s no privacy any longer. The germ didn’t affect women the same way, though–the women all died instead.

This book is completely, utterly brilliant. I reached the end, screamed, and immediately dashed for book #2, which is winging towards me as we speak. This book was absolutely ridiculously good.

Most of all, I have to say that there was a fair bit of violence in it. I’ve admitted before violence makes me queasy, but this worked for me, mostly because the violence had the real, emotional cost that I think this all takes. Books that don’t recognize that cost–where someone kills someone, however evil, and then blithely moves on–do not work for me. They work for some. But this book was laden with all the shades of emotional and moral complexity that I love.

I haven’t had time to get a second copy of this book, but I will before Friday.

So, here’s the deal: I’m giving away copies of each of these books, to three separate commenters. Post, tell me which one(s) you want, and on Friday I will pick winners. These books are all utterly mindblowingly amazing. I don’t really know any of the authors–something that is rarely true in romance. Edited to add: You can say you want more than one. It will not hurt your chances at the others.

These books are so awesome I cannot resist buying extra copies. You benefit!

Auctions to bid on!

At this moment, I am starting work on my fourth book–when my second is not even on the shelves yet. I am very, very excited about this book.

This is the problem. I am always excited about books when the idea is new and fresh in my head. I am so excited, that often I fail to realize when the idea is utterly stupid. Which, sometimes, it is. I have to write part of it, and then my editor and/or my agent will read it, and they will tell me if I am insane.

(Technically, nobody needs to tell me that–I am perfectly aware of it already.) This idea I have is either utter genius or complete lunacy, and I rely on my editor and agent to tell me which one it is. (And sometimes, they say Really Important Things like, “This is not a bad idea, but don’t you think it would be a good idea to make your hero more proactive?” And I listen, because while I am a lunatic, my editor and agent are both geniuses.)

This is rather unfair to new authors, because they do not usually get editors and agents to tell them if their ideas are crazy.

Every year, however, around this time, Brenda Novak holds an auction to benefit diabetes research. My uncle died of complications arising out of diabetes, and this cause means a great deal to me. Which is why I am pleased to point out that if you fear that you are a lunatic, there are some very awesome auctions you can bid on.

Namely, you can get Kristin Nelson, my genius agent, to read the first 30 pages of your manuscript. She won’t actually say “that’s completely crazy” because she is not only a genius, but she is nice–but she is honest, thorough, and very, very smart. I can’t imagine the value of that.

You can also get my genius editor, Margo Lipschultz, to read the first three chapters of your manuscript and then talk to you on the phone about it.

While I’m here, I should mention that back in the days when I was unpublished, I bid on a critique from a published author that I really respected. Her name–which all of you assuredly know–is Anna Campbell. She’s a relatively new name in historical fiction, but a rising star who writes dark, deeply emotional historical romance. She is also a truly amazing critiquer. She read the first bit of a book that has never seen the light of publishing, and gave me some advice that really just nailed what was wrong with my writing. It was the best two-hundred-something bucks I ever spent on anything in publishing, and it is a crying shame that the exact same auction today is only at $145 today. That is a complete steal, people!

Along those lines, Ann Aguirre/Ava Gray (who is also half of Ellen Connor) is offering a critique of 100 pages of a book. I think Ann/Ava/0.5Ellen is one of the best up-and-coming authors there is, and she is relentless in her pursuit of excellence.

Finally, I have a critique up for auction on 50 pages. I know. You are thinking, “But Courtney. You have already admitted you are crazy. Why on earth would I want you to critique my manuscript?” To which I say–it often helps to have crazy people read your manuscripts! They see things sane people miss.

There are lots and lots of other great things up for auction–more editors and more agents and more authors offering critiques, signed books, advance copies…. I am bidding on some of them.

On self-dealing

Sorry I have been absent. I handed in a book early this week, and I have been playing catch-up ever since. This blog has long been neglected, and it is only getting unneglected today because I am going to say something I shouldn’t say.

There is an unspoken rule in publishing that you should not criticize publishing professionals. I am going to criticize publishing professionals, and I am going to do it because I think that what is happening is wrong and unethical. Some of the people I am going to criticize, I will say in advance, I have heard glowing things about–marvelously awesome things–and so please keep this in mind. Even marvelously awesome people do things that cross ethical boundaries.

The Association of Author’s Representatives has a canon of ethics, which states (among many other things): “Members shall not represent both buyer and seller in the same transaction.”

The basic idea is this: If you advise someone, and you are in a position of trust, you should not compromise that position of trust by steering them towards options where what you want and what they want do not coincide. For instance, a financial adviser should not steer her clients to invest in a company owned by her brother-in-law: The clients just want to make money, but the financial adviser is emotionally involved with the company, and perhaps will not be able to emotionally separate herself from the prospect of helping her brother-in-law get his company off the ground. Even if the financial adviser believes she is operating on a perfectly rational level, and is willing to invest her own money to get the company off the ground, she can never be sure that her emotional involvement does not color her picture. The end result is that to avoid any appearance of ethical lapses–and to protect herself from emotional influences that are so subterranean that even she can’t detect them–a wise adviser avoids such issues entirely by never, ever steering clients towards investments where she, or her loved ones, will profit personally.

The same is true for agents. An agent is an author’s most zealous advocate. She fights for every aspect of her clients’ careers. A great agent monitors print run, coop, marketing. She pushes for foreign sales. When you go back to contract, she asks for more money, better royalty rates, a bigger push in marketing. An author trusts her agent explicitly–and it’s easy to do so, because an author and an agent have interests that are wholly aligned. You want to make more money as an author; your agent wants to make more money as an agent. She gets 15% of what you get. Her interest is your interest: to sell as many books to as many people as possible.

When we were deciding between publishing houses, my agent helped lay out the pros and cons for me of all my options. We talked about our biggest worries with each one, and I believed that she was pushing to get the very best offer we could from every house, so that I could make an informed decision. I knew that she wanted to get the best for me, because (a) my agent is the kind of perfectionist who would never let anything stop her, and (b) it was never in her interest to do anything else.

This stops being true if your agent is either a publisher herself, or is so intertwined with the publisher that you cannot distinguish between them. And, sadly, this is the second time this year I’ve seen agents who have morphed themselves from agents. The first is Lori Perkins, whose clients are sold to a publisher in which she holds a financial interest, Ravenous Romance. Lori Perkins has explained that she doesn’t take a commission on those sales to Ravenous from her clients–but all that this accomplishes is that now she truly has no financial interest in doing what is right for her clients. She has no interest in fighting for an extra 2% royalty rate, or a higher advance for her clients, because now she isn’t even getting paid for that.

The second is the Waxman Agency, which recently announced Diversion Books, an electronic press. Diversion Books has already published books written by Waxman Agency clients. And I have to ask: Really? If your agency owns a publishing house, do you really think you won’t be biased–just a little–in negotiating contracts with your clients? Will you really be able to tell your clients, “Yes, I think that it’s best if you publish with us, versus a more established e-publisher like Samhain?” without having the teensiest bit of bias? Can you evaluate your chances of success–logically and dispassionately, the way you would for an author choosing between publishing houses? Will you fight yourself for the best royalty rate? Will you be asking hard questions of yourself? If you produce a horrendous cover, will you call yourself up and say, “Honey, no. We have to lose the mullet,” or will you be the one to placate the author? Can you really wear both those hats?

Don’t get me wrong. I have several friends who have Holly Root of the Waxman Agency as an agent, and they universally sing her praises. I have heard nothing but good things about her. But for me, this would be an instant deal-breaker.

I don’t think these people mean to screw their clients. I honestly believe that the Waxman Agency really does think that this is, in fact, a good thing for their clients, an additional opportunity that their clients can avail themselves of. None of the people I have named are bad people. None of them are perfidious jerks, trying to do their clients wrong. But all of them have put themselves in the way of temptation. They have complicated straight-forward interests. And smart people who zealously represent their clients don’t do that. That’s the point of rules of ethics: to steer you away from temptation, even the ones that are so subterranean you might not recognize them.

I understand that publishing is changing and that the role of agent will see revamping over the next few decades. But the one thing I can say for sure is this: If the role of agent morphs into the role of publisher, the person needs to stop calling themselves an “agent.” If there is anything–anything at all–that stands in the way of an agent zealously representing her client, that person has ceased to be an agent. They may be a publisher. They may be a full-service book-packager with editorial add ons. They may still be something very valuable in the publishing world–don’t get me wrong–I understand where all of this is coming from. They may be visionaries in publishing.

But what they are not doing is zealously representing their clients’ interests. If there is any financial issue that stands as a roadblock between your client’s best interests and your own, you’re not 100% an agent any longer, and that is a problem.

So, what do I think you should do about this, if you’re looking for an agent? My best advice is to look for an agent who is a member of AAR. The Association of Author’s Representatives has a smart canon of ethics. It’s not a guarantee–there are always liars, or people who bend the rules–but look for someone who values that canon.

I know that this post is not going to make everyone happy. I’m sorry for that–but the truth of the matter is this. If you’re going to pay someone 15% of your work, you deserve full value for your money. And someone who is conflicted about that–or is willing to enter into such conflicts–in my mind is not worth the price.