The scene: My house. Yesterday.

Act One: Chips on the Line

TR: Thank you for taking the time to speak with me, Long-Suffering and Talented Indiv– [sound of potato chips being crushed in front of a microphone]
Long-Suffering and Talented Individual: You’re welcome. Are you eating potato chips in front of a microphone?
TR: Not this time. (looks out window) I think the neighbors’ construction has done something drastic to our landline.
LSTI: [reply drowned out by sound of crunching static]
TR: Exactly.

Act Two: The Husband’s Panic

Mr. R: (dashes into office in a tizzy)§ You need to turn your cell phone on!
TR: (with great dignity, holds up cell phone to display its on-ness) It IS on. Why?
Mr. R: Because I’ve been trying to call you and I can’t get through on the landline or on your cell phone.
TR: Is everything ok?
Mr. R: Except for our phones, yes. (tests phones and shakes head with expression of disgust) Nothing. They’re both out.
TR: So you’re saying that independently of one another, our landline and my cell phone have stopped working. On the same day.
Mr. R: It seems so.
TR: Skynet?
Mr. R: It seems so.

Act Three: Hypothetical Pets

TR: Mr. R was certainly in a tizzy.§ I shall endeavor to shoot the troubles for these phones. (logs on to landline tech support site)
Landline Tech Support Site: “The site is currently down. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
TR: Skynet! But I remain undaunted. (calls cell phone tech support number using landline)
Long-Suffering Tech Support Person: Hello. May I have your [remainder of request drowned out by sound of crunching static]
TR: I’m sorry, I’m having some phone troub– [crunching static]
LSTSP: That’s [static]. Can I just have the [static] of your pet to verify your identity as the account holder?
TR: Sorry, the what?
LSTSP: The name of your pet. So I can access your account.
TR: …I don’t have a pet.
LSTSP: Um. Did someone else set up this account for you?
TR: No.
LSTSP: Um.
TR: [static]

§ Yes. Tizzy.

The scene: Earlier this evening. In the living room, aka the imaginarium.

Little Miss R: Quick!  There’s a fire over there! It’s burning up all the DVDs!

Me: Oh dear. That sounds bad.

Little Miss R: It is! But it’s just pretend. But it’s a bad fire!

Me: Ok, well, let’s get a pretend hose and put it out.

Little Miss R: Wait. (puts hand on my arm to restrain me) Let me get you a stick so you can toast marshmallows first.

Me: …Um. Is that what we should do when we see a fire?

Little Miss R: Yes. I’m toasting sixty-one marshmallows. You may have one of them.

Today I have for you a vintage literary effort.  Judging from the “creative” handwriting (sorry about that), as well as the parakeet obsession, I would guess I came up with these 21 gems–as the post title implies, a veritable blackjack–when I was about ten years old:

In four words, I just broke the brains of the good people over at Lake Superior State University, who have come out with their annual list of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-Use, Over-Use, and General Uselessness.  ”Epic,” “fail,” and “viral” are all on the list, as are “I’m just sayin’,” “man up,” and “refudiate.”

I really enjoy lists like this, because I have lots of linguistic tics.  Some of them are even up for banishment:  just look at the tags for this post.  Most are less fascinating.  I’ve actually created a Word file called “Useless words,” and every time I finish a draft of a manuscript, I search it for all the useless words and delete as many as I can.  Usually it’s around 600.  Yeah, I know.  (One of my favorite useless words is actually a phrase:  ”Of course.”  Gah!  That sucker is everywhere, until I weed it out.)

Do you have any most hated, most over-used, or (to look on the positive side) favorite words?

So pretty soon now I’ll be having a birthday that starts with “th” and ends with “uh..twenty-nine. Yeah.” It’s a milestone we all reach eventually, I suppose, unless we don’t.

To give myself a little perspective, or just make myself feel terrible, I thought I’d look at what some famous authors in history had accomplished by their thirtieth birthdays.

William Shakespeare: Turned 30 in 1594.  Had been married 12 years. Had 3 children, including twins.

Prognosis: Not good.  Unless I learn to bend space and time (which I can’t…YET), I won’t accomplish any of those things.  Although from what I’ve heard from a friend who has twins, it is very helpful in handling them if you CAN bend space and time.

John Keats: Turned “30″ in 1825. Had actually been dead from tuberculosis for almost five years.

Prognosis: Unlikely.  My TB tests have always been negative.

P.G. Wodehouse: Turned 30 in 1911. Had been born prematurely and nicknamed “Plum”. (I believe the two facts are unrelated.)

Prognosis: Fair.  I have never had any nickname at all (hush, Mom), but possible I could get some kind of fruit name going in time.  “Grapefruit” could be fun.

Agatha Christie: Turned 30 in 1920. Had worked as nurse during World War I. Published first murder mystery, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, featuring vain Belgian Hercule Poirot.

Prognosis: Mediocre. While I did not work as a nurse during World War I (I was negative 65 years old, which most consider too young for adopting a helping profession), I have included vain characters in some of my books. And Very Bad Things happen in Belgium to the hero of my WIP, including some deaths (not his). My first novel won’t come out until I’m 31, though. Too bad.

Sigh. That didn’t go so well.

Who else should we consider?  The great Jane?  At age 30, she had one book sold (though not published), and two more written but not sold yet.

Hmm. That’s more like it.

Anyone else I should match myself against?  Got any Americans for the list?

Especially not you men out there. (29 seconds of eeeeiiiiggggh, courtesy of the year 1894.)

So I’m plotting a new book now and the Interwebs hold inspiration aplenty.  It turns out there are some very well thought out analyses of what the essential Regency historical romance should include.

Here’s the perfect plot.

Here are some essential characters.

And here are some miscellaneous wonders with which to lard the book.

These are hilarious.  HILARIOUS.  And like the best satire, they have a golf-ball-sized chunk o’ truth in them.

It’s hard not to do some of these things. But why is that?  The short version, I think, is because a historical romance writer has to:

1.  make a book that takes place 200 years ago (or more) relatable to a modern audience, and

2.  make the book stay interesting for 300+ pages.

That means using enlightened, non-chauvinist heroes (or if they are jerky, they must See The Error Of Their Ways) and intelligent, resourceful — even sassmouth — heroines.  It also means that there has to be more going on (e.g., spying or murdering or baby-making or identity-mistaking) than just everyone going to a bunch of parties, which was probably closer to the reality of Regency London during the Season.

This has been true of books for a long time, of course.  Let’s take Jane Austen’s Emma.  Emma is “handsome, clever, and rich.”  Outspoken intelligent heroine?  Check. Carries a basket of herbs?  Yep.  AND the hero criticizes her all the time even though he has hot pants for her.  Her best friend is illegitimate.  Her father is distracted and only cares about his ill health.  And her weasely first suitor winds up marrying a classic City Ho who makes everyone’s life more annoying.

Go click on those links again.  Does a lot of that sound familiar?  Maybe we have these trends (dare we even call them clichés?) because, in the right hands – which Miss Austen’s assuredly are – they are GREAT.  We know those people, and we are interested in spending page after page with them.  And even 200 years after Jane, these trends can still be great in the right hands.

Which is not to say there aren’t some trends or clichés that need to go away – but what those are, you’ll pretty much never get people to agree on.  Our Hate list can easily overlap with someone else’s Love list. There are no hard and fast rules.

That being said, here’s the top of my own personal Hate list, scientifically listed in the order in which I think of items.

1.  Tripping over stuff. Please.  If I want to deal with that, I can get plenty of it in real life, because I am clumsy and a half.  Characters who are always tripping over molecules are just plain aggravating.  And why is it always the heroine?  Women wore soft little slippers.  Men wore big clumsy boots.  Surely men tripped too.

(Now, I will admit, I’ve chucked a character off a ladder, which is sort of like tripping downward.  So I do break even my own rules.)

2. An angry boner man hero (concept delightfully named by Smart Bitches, Trashy Books). He shows up in both contemporaries and historicals.  This is the guy who wants the heroine even though he hates her, which secretly means he loves her, and he’s mad about wanting her because he doesn’t want to want her.  Usually he’s mean to her, too.  You don’t see this guy too often anymore, which is fine by me.

And finally, his counterpart…

3.  The heroine who cries. Some crying is fine.  What I’m talking here is a weak lady who responds to problems with tears, not action.  If she cried, then kicked some literal or figurative butt, I’d be ok with that.

Now let’s get happier.  What do I Love?

1.  Wagering.  Bring it.  Wager money, wager gemstones, wager your virtue.  I don’t care whether this type of thing really happened in the Regency.  If you set it up well, and if it flows from the plot, you could wager… I don’t know, a giant wheel of cheese, and I’d love it.

2.  Supportive siblings.  Love ‘em in real life, love ‘em in books.  Books need some witches for interest, too, but it’s nice when there are a few sweetie pies to help out the hero and heroine.  (Bonus:  these characters often get their own books.)

3.  Characters who change each other for the better.  She teaches him how to roast a partridge.  He teaches her how to shoot. Together, they rule the hunting party!!!!!

This is a stupid and I do believe made-up example, but you know what I mean – they each become better alone and they also become better together.

What do you all love?  What do you all hate?  And can the right author magically turn your Hates back into Loves?

Ok, I admit, I don’t tweet – not yet, anyway.  My supply of interesting things to say is pretty well tapped out, between my Real Job and my writing and this blog and saying “No. No. Crayons stay on the tray” 8,000 times a day when Little Miss R decides the wall is her canvas.

But I really like Twitter.  As you know if you’ve read “About Me” on this site, I love to snoop and learn weird stuff about people.  I don’t crave a prison record littered with misdemeanor offenses, and I’m not even really that bad of a Googlestalker (with the exception of old boyfriends, but hey, we’ve all done that, right?).  No, I pretty much confine my snooping to what people are willing to tell me.  That goes for history books, and it goes for our weirdest, awesomest modern public correspondence:  Twitter.

Twitter is so fun.  It really is.  You can click around forever and read posts from your favorite authors and your friends and even (if you’re a hungry new author) agents and editors.  You can get a good idea of people’s personalities.  For example, when my favorite author tweets that she ate a delicious pumpkin muffin (or whatever), that makes me feel like I know a little bit about her day.  Plus I love pumpkin muffins too, so if we ever meet, I know the first thing I’m going to say to her.**  Or when my agent tweeted that she had major computer problems – well, I tried to be a good author and lay off, because I know what an Economy Sized Headache it is to deal with a big crash.

Twitter’s language is addictive too, at least for compulsive people who love the idea of sorting their world into topics.  To me, this is what has been missing from the world all the 2357623 years I have been living in it.  There are topics related to writing, agenting, and querying.  Some are funny and helpful; some…not so much.

My favorite is #writerfail, or “WTF,” as I like to call it, in which writers admit the unwitting bonehead moves they’ve made.  This topic is definitely from the school of “close your eyes in pain as you recognize your own flaws, tweeted in hilarious 140-character bites.”  It’s a great school.

For your viewing pleasure, here’s my own personal Top 5 edition of #writerfail.  Of course, these all spring from my imagination and have no basis in reality.

5.  “Helping” your awesome friend who is designing your website by deleting chunks of html coding.

4.  Learning that you should never hassle an agent by following up to a rejection, so not even sending a thank-you note for a very thoughtful, detailed, and personalized R. (This one also gets a #headdesk.  Politeness issues gnaw at me and make me wish I could apply a Control-Z to real life.  I would follow up now if I could, if this were not hypothetical, but by this time it wouldn’t make sense to the people involved and therefore would be even more embarrassing than doing nothing.)

3.   Forgetting that brains, like fetuses, wake up at night just when you’re trying to go to sleep.  Keep some paper by your bed to jot down those random ideas, if for no other reason than that it’s hilarious to read your scribbled notes in the morning.

2.  Getting too sucked into review websites and author blogs and , oh yes, Twitter to actually write anything.

And best of all…

1.  Passing up an opportunity for ACTUAL romance to WRITE romance instead.

Ah, those relationships we make up in our heads and write into Word.  They’re so much easier than the real ones, aren’t they — and yet the real ones are the ones that make the made-up ones possible.

Ok, I am adding a special 1a. to my list for that last sentence.  That is a total #writerfail if I ever saw one.  But you know what I mean.

**Just kidding.  Don’t be a creeper.