Lies seem to be flavour of the month, don’t they? [Can’t think what made me light on that, can you?] I can’t match Dame Isadora on lies, but I found myself thinking about lies in fiction and what they say about the characters. And, sometimes, the readers, too.
Don’t know about you, but the heroes and heroines I write have to be people of integrity. Does that mean they can’t tell lies, though?
Um. Well, no. Not exactly.
It depends… Continue reading
The ideal hero? The Libertà blog has included a number of posts about heroes, most recently one I wrote about whether a plumber can be a hero. Also posts about villains, who can be more than a little droolworthy, especially when played by Alan Rickman.
Just my opinion. Feel free to disagree. 😉
Today I want to ask about casting your ideal hero in the movie of a favourite book. Any book you choose. Maybe even one you’ve written yourself?
The key question is: who is going to play your hero? And why? Continue reading
What to do during lockdown? Last week, we suggested recipes you might enjoy. This week, I’m suggesting some puzzles — none too difficult, I promise — to test your grey cells.
In the grid below are well-known book titles, authors, characters and houses.
See how many you can find, using the clues below the grid. Continue reading
This weekend, we four Libertà authors are reminiscing about things military.There’s something about a man in uniform, isn’t there? Even Lizzie Bennet was impressed (for a while) by George Wickham in his scarlet regimentals. But is it also true of contemporary military men? Continue reading
Hi, Sarah here. If you think writing is easy, think again!
Yes, an author might have a burst of creativity, ideas may come thick and fast, but translating those scenes in one’s head into a publishable book can be tortuous. Sometimes anything seems a better option than actually putting words on the page.
Recently, Liz Fielding and I sat down to discuss the problem of procrastination. Then we were distracted!
So — yesterday we finally sat down to discuss it!
Liz: Ah, the P word, Sarah. What can I say? When the words are slow to come, there is always the lure of Pinterest… Continue reading
Just over a week ago I asked an expert why P G Wodehouse seemed so out of sympathy with the romantic novelist. Did he know one?
This is where I should probably admit that I have a sneaky image of a young Barbara Cartland pursuing him. Well, PGW was a big name when he visited London in the 20s and she was a newbie author and playwright.
If they did meet, I would put good money on him evaporating sharpish. He had perfected the technique. His family called it the Wodehouse Glide. But nobody I’ve come across has offered any evidence of Wodehouse encountering a romantic novelist in real life.
The expert said, quite rightly, that PGW was pretty brisk on the subject of all sorts of pretentiousness. And, anyway, PGW handed out as many knocks to male poets as he did to female novelists. Continue reading
A recent lecture on La Dolce Vita started me thinking about the variety of fictional blondes I have come across in my life. For there is something special about The Blonde. She grabs our attention the moment she appears. Indeed, in twentieth century western culture she became almost an icon.
Yet at the same time she has as many aspects as a Greek goddess, positive, negative and sometimes just plain loopy. And we all know them.
“Having a blonde moment,” my friend, author Sarah Mallory, will say, as she discovers the sunglasses she has been searching for are lodged securely on the top of her head.
She’s channelling the Airhead Blonde — charming, disorganised, sometimes a little naïve, sociable, and so good-hearted that you forgive her any amount of stuff that would irritate the hell out of you in a grey-haired matron or a sultry brunette.
Forgive her and maybe even love her. We pay to go and see movies about her. That shows you! Continue reading
Revisiting the Romantic Hero Formula —
except that there isn’t a formula, as I tried to show in the first blog on this topic. So, instead, I’m going to explore some aspects of creating the romantic hero.
With examples from a master of the art of hero-creation — Georgette Heyer.
Most of us would say that our aim in writing romance is to create a heroine that our readers will identify with and a hero that they will lust after. Warning: it is not easy to do and not all readers will respond in the same way. Some may adore our hero and some may hate him. As romance authors, we’re winning if we have a lot more of the former. 😉
Tall dark and handsome? Not necessarily. As readers we probably all have favourite heroes who are none of those. As writers, we may have created some of them, too.
Most telling recent example? Who became the abiding hero in the Game of Thrones series? Yes, Tyrion, the dwarf. Continue reading
Today, we welcome our first guest blogger of 2018, Christina Hollis, a writer with quite a pedigree.
Christina has written non-fiction, historical novels, and modern romances for Harlequin Mills & Boon and other publishers, selling nearly 3 million books in more than twenty languages.
But today, Christina is not talking about her writing.
Today her guest blog is about Alex, her beloved hairy-chested hero…
Intelligent, a good listener, the perfect companion for long country walks—but that’s enough about my husband. I’m here to tell you about Alex, our retriever/labrador cross. Continue reading
Hero = handsome; heroine = beautiful?
Bestselling author Susanna Kearsley published a blog last week that asks a thought-provoking question about romantic heroines: — why is it that “some readers, when faced with a blank face, are programmed to fill in the features as ‘beautiful’?”
Good question.
A disturbing question, too, perhaps.
But what about the heroes? Do we readers fill in male features in a similar way? Why?
Do the heroes of our imagination have to be tall, dark and handsome? Continue reading
