Tag Archives: In Service series

Big Girl Pants: Authors Should NEVER Comment on Reviews for Their Books

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Recently, as in a week ago this Friday, I released Forever in Your Service, book 2 of the In Service series. Reviews began coming in immediately, which was surprising because that means people are finding and reading my books about the female butler and the spy who loves her and her scrambled eggs.
Since reviews came all whizz-bang fast, and I actually read them when someone pointed out I had a review, I suddenly felt like I was in an old movie about an actor in a Broadway production after opening night, looking at the newspaper reviews of the show the next morning, you know when the actor sees something along the lines of “A Triumph!” Or “A bloated, dire attempt at genre crossing; Antonelli knows nothing about plot, pacing, or how to make scrambled eggs.”  Or “It’ll make you cry.”
That last quote is ambivalent and, if I had received such a review, I would have chosen to see as a good cry rather than bad cry because I’m like that.
Yeah, so reviews. Authors are advised to NEVER to comment on reviews, but…
I read something this morning that made me laugh. This is all couched in humour. I swear on a cup of coffee this is not really about me commenting on how a reader did or did not enjoy Forever in Your Service, or the comment they left on the review, which was in, essence, their review. This is more my reaction to a reader’s response to a character’s choice of UNDERPANTS/knickers/panties/undies, which I totally appreciated since it was about underpants, something I put on every day with very deliberate choice.

This is more of an Author’s Note* I could have placed in the book, an author’s need to do some ‘splaining, or more rightly confessing.  Practical, like Mae the butler in the series, Big White Underpants (BWU)  are the most comfy kind of pants to wear under tights. I’ve worn them since, well, forever. I am a huge fan of BWU, cotton ones, the big briefs that come up to, or just below, my belly button, the kind Dr Shrinkee calls Bombay Bloomers and Granny-panties, the sort that I have worn since I was a kid and a fashion-conscious teen aware of the VPL one got with bikinis and g-bangers (g-string for you in the US), the pants with which there is never a VPL, the pants I will still be wearing when I am 90. I love them THAT MUCH.
I’m pretty sure this isn’t a comment about a review of Forever in Your Service as much as it is a review of my very deliberate choice of underpants for a practical heroine who also wears aprons like I do.
*Author’s note: Poor Mae was subjected to a pair of more ‘fashionable’ knickers that got stuck in uncomfortable places in the previous book, soon to be available in print, At Your Service.

Discovery of the Obvious

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The hardest thing any author faces is discovery. We write the book, we try to get the book published traditionally, or go indie and put the book out ourselves. That’s the easy part. The thing that makes us pull out our hair is trying to get noticed. Or in my case noticed and HEARD

This week, I was very kindly invited to be a guest and post on Breathless in the Bush, “an eclectic group of writers who share a love of Romance, the enjoyment of a good laugh, and a dedication to learning all we can about the craft of writing.” These wonderful Australian writers have graciously allowed me to tell them and other readers and writers about Seasoned Romance and, of course, my books. It’s a lovely way to  have readers discover my upcoming release, Forever in Your Service, the second book of the In Service series, which again features a middle-aged female butler and the spy who loves her. It comes out 29 March.

If you enjoyed At Your Service and the short story Your Sterling Service, I think you really might kind of like Forever In Your Service. It has a dog in it. Also, the leads, Mrs Valentine and Major Kitt, discover things about each other as they discover the world around them is made of cowboys, charlatans, wine, snow, and obvious lies.

Where was I ? Oh, yes, discovery. You know I write novels with an emphasis on the portrayal of women over 40 as heroines, I write older romantic heroines and I always have. I’ve been going on and on–okay, I’ve been ranting about older romance heroines, ageism and sexism in Hollywood, in publishing, and especially in romance fiction. Whether you want to call what I write Adult-Contemporary romance, ‘mature’ romance, grown-up romance, later-in-life romance, or to use the term author Maggie Wells coined, Seasoned Romance, they are central love story where the female lead, where couples of ‘a certain age’ are front and centre as lead characters in a story that comes with all the hallmarks you love and expect in a romance, novel, right down to sexy times and the all-important Happily Ever After.

Guess what? I’m not alone in what I do. Others have joined my voice, have given credence to my academic and ongoing scholarly research, the stuff about an overlooked audience of readers eager to see older heroines and older couples in their fiction, and the viability of women aged 40+ as romance heroines.  There are other like me out there, writers and readers. We’ve been here and now we’ve joined forces. Visit the Seasoned Romance Facebook Group to find out more about the authors and readers and books.  JOIN US!

We’ve been out here all along, writing, and writing, and having some of our books traditionally or Indie published. We’ve been waiting for you to notice, to discover us, and I’ve been telling you, I’ve been shouting, “We’re here!  We’re here!” like a little Who from Whoville.

I’m not going to say it.

Okay, yes I am.

I told you so.

 

A Valentine, The At Your Service Edition: or Inside the Mind of a Novelist

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There’s that thing a lot of writers do. They base a character on someone they know, or model a character on a well-know figure. For example, at the recent Golden Globe awards, during his acceptance speech for his win as best actor for his role in the film Vice,  British actor Christian Bale (You did know he was British, didn’t you?) thanked Satan for inspiring him to play a morally-dubious character– the real-life former American Vice President Dick Cheney. The Lord of Darkness was what gave Bale a model to inhabit. And trust me, Bale DOES inhabit his role in Vice.

Writers, like actors, find inspiration in someone. The character of GP in my novel A Basic Renovation was modeled on my coffee-drinking, surly, often hilarious grandpa who was born in 1906. I occasionally find inspiration in someone and some thing, be a it mannerism, a habit, a certain sense of fashion. While I don’t know any real life spies (although there is the one friend we have whose work is so complex and intellectual that when he explains the complexity of what it is he does, it makes us think he’s got to be a spy because his explanation is so obfuscated by the complexity), I do like spy novels, spy movies, Daniel Craig, Sean Connery, Jason Bourne, Matt Helm, Our Man Flint, George Smiley, and Austin Powers.

Lots of authors write about spies. Nowadays, fictional spies are, let’s face it, a cliché. By God, I love the cliché. The spy cliché is my inspiration. Mostly.

I play a lot with the spy cliché in At Your Service, the upcoming, Forever In Your Service, and the short story Your Sterling Service. I poke some fun at the cliché-riddled superspy genre. At the same time, I wanted to take the well-known iconic superspy and retool him around the clichés without resorting to Austin Powers-esque parody, but I still wanted readers to see the self-assured, expert, erudite, womanising man trip over his own feet and emotions– and recognise him as that familiar spy figure. Yet the thing, my inspiration to make my spy, Major Kitt, human amid all the fictional clichés hinged upon two facts: Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, loved scrambled eggs and I eat eggs for breakfast every day. 

Eggs. Scrambled eggs for breakfast became Major Kitt. Eggs and breakfast became the running theme for the In Service books. Eggs are the motivation for the character, an item that makes Kitt think of things, of someone he never dreamed of wanting. Scrambled eggs (not Satan) are what make Kitt have a heart, the kind runny with emotion.