julian_griffith

WIP meme

What is the title of the book you’re currently working on?

I'm not yet working on the sequel to Love Continuance and Increasing - I'm waiting for an amazing book I discovered, Memoirs of a Sergeant: The 43rd Light Infantry During the Peninsular War, because that's where Rockingham's going next, and that's his regiment. Can't learn everything from Sharpe, and the history books I've checked out of the library are proving dry.

The next story I'll be working on will be for the Speak Its Name Advent Calendar -- I was a bit shy of volunteering, as I haven't been published yet, but Erastes was very kind and said I could join in, and I'm very excited to be participating! I'm still working out what it will be about, other than my two male protagonists. It'd either have to be epistolary or set in Guernsey, I think -- I don't know how often I can get away with Rockingham taking leave from his regiment.

After that, I've got another one in the works, STILL a Christmas story, this one between Polly, Caroline and Rockingham's cook-maid, and Tim, a soldier in Rockingham's regiment. Maybe I'll be done with writing Christmas stories by Christmas?

As for titles, I'm TERRIBLE with them. I generally do them last, and pinch a quote from Shakespeare, or, in the case of the Christmas story I just finished (which is a bit of an epilogue to the novel), from a traditional Christmas carol. Which I, having been raised Jewish, had never heard until I was browsing the net for suitable ones, but which turned out to be txanne 's childhood favorite. Go figure.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

The sequel? Wanting to stay with my characters. The Advent calendar story? Going over the novel timeline and seeing where my characters were at Christmas each year, and deciding that the Brest blockade was entirely unsuitable, so it had to be 1802, before the Peace of Amiens completely broke down. The Polly-and-Tim story? Carina's open call for a military-themed Home For The Holidays story, and wanting to look at Polly's life -- I enjoy writing about the downstairs folk just as much as the upstairs ones, and typically know more things about their backgrounds than I get to show when I'm writing about officers and gentlemen! (Gonna have to fudge a little bit about what was happening between October and Christmas as it's set after Copenhagen.)

What genre does your book fall under?
Historical Romance. The sub-genres (LGBT Menage for the book, m/m for the Advent story, het for the Home for the Holidays one) entirely depend on which characters I look at.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Most of you reading this know exactly who Thorne and Rockingham are, though at this point I need the movie to be filmed ten years ago. Caroline is Jennifer Connelly c. 1990, if only she were five feet two. Here's one I can tell you: Rockingham's mother, Lady Sybil (which is totally an inaccurate form of address, and she knows it, but as there are up to three Lady Rockinghams in a room at any given time, she wanted something to distinguish herself, and her father might have been an earl, I haven't specified) -- anyway, Rockingham's Mama is Prunella Scales.

What is a one-sentence synopsis of the book?

Let's go with the Home for the Holidays novella: Cook-maid Polly Lucas welcomes her soldier-sweetheart Tim home from Copenhagen, and declares her dismay at being left behind to wait for him, and they decide to marry so that she can follow the regiment wherever they are posted next.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I don't have an agent. If the novel gets published, I'll offer that publisher the first crack at the sequel; the Advent story is a bit of free publicity (and I am SO EXCITED to be doing it) and the Home for the Holidays one is meant for Carina.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

Love Continuance and Increasing took six months. The Advent story is due no later than mid-December, and the Home for the Holidays piece is die March 1. For comparison purposes, Therefore Be Merry, Set Sorrow Aside was 16.5K, and I knocked it out in two weeks, but that was VERY concentrated effort, and I'm hoping to take the next two at an easier pace.

What other books would you compare this story to in your genre?

I barely realized there WAS a Historical LGBT Menage Romance genre until I started looking for places that might take my book. I suppose I ought to read some others?

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I'm laying it all on Erastes, who told me a year ago, after I'd corrected that stupid mistake that the Law & Order: UK writers had made, that I should stop writing fanfic and look to get published. Took me another six months to find the characters and setting that said to me, "We can sustain a novel's worth of story." I'd never done anything that long before except a Snape/Evan Rosier romance in 2004, and that was a collaboration with eternaleponine .

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Historically and locally accurate food. Military uniforms. A Newfoundland. I'm not entirely sure what the features of interest will be in the stories I haven't written yet, except that there will ALWAYS be food.