Author to Author - Judith Arnopp chats with Maria Grace

Today we are joined  by Regency Romance Author, Maria Grace. Thank you for coming to talk to us today, Maria.

First, can you tell us what got you started as a writer? What did your early efforts look like? Are they still around to be used as bribes and blackmail material?

 

I think I was in the third grade when I started writing. The first effort was a stick-figure illustrated book of poetry that no one but me has seen in decades, and I think it is going to stay that way.  A couple years later, I pecked out my first short story anthology on a Smith-Corona manual typewriter.  That too is hidden away in a box, away from prying eyes and potential blackmailers.

If you were to write the 'origin's episode' of your writing what would be the most important scenes?

I can think of a couple important scenes in that script.  The first would be my third grade teacher patiently showing me how to format poetry and encouraging my first efforts, no matter how bad they were.  I had a similarly encouraging fourth grade teacher who recruited me to help write a grade level play on the history of our state that won district-wide attention, that would be another important scene.  The final one would be set in my High School years with my friends begging for the next installment of the six part fantasy series I was writing. Those were some very special times. 

Who are your partners in crime? What are their superpowers?

I have several partners, my family of course, first and foremost.  Their superpower is patience with me.  They listen to my wacky ideas and even come up with the plot twists that are staring me in the face, but I don’t recognize. I couldn’t do it without their unreserved support.

I have some wonderful writing buddies whose superpower is courage.  They aren’t afraid to tell me when something is just plain bad and in need of work.  It takes a true friend to tell you your main character is stupid and they don’t like her at all.

Finally, my proofreading partners whose superpower is super-vision to ferret out all those typos and other errors that are just invisible to me.  I can’t ever thank them enough.

Where is your secret lair and what does it look like?

My secret lair is the office I share with my engineer husband. The room is painted in his favorite color, royal purple—seriously. We have two desks, four book cases, a secretary armoire with pull out desk, two file cabinets and a love seat all crammed in that 11x12 foot room. It isn’t unusual to find both of us, our three teen-aged sons, five cats and the dog all packed in there watching TV in the evening, even though there is a perfectly serviceable living room just down the hall.

What are the biggest challenges faced with in your writing?

My biggest challenge is making sure I keep my focus on writing, not the thousand and one other things clambering for my attention all at once, not the least of which is the current desk cat, who trades duties with his brothers so there’s always a fresh cat in need of petting stationed between me and the keyboard.

What important lessons have you learned along the way?

  

Someone once told me, “Do it, afraid.” That really stuck with me. Writing is pretty easy all told, letting anyone else read it is an entirely different story. From the moment I first let someone read what I wrote, there hasn’t been a step in the process that hasn’t filled me with some level of panic. But I grit my teeth and just do it, afraid, and I’m glad I have.

What have been the best/most memorable experiences along the way?

When I put my first story out to be read and people actually liked it and encouraged me—that was a moment I won’t forget.

What is the best writing advice you have ever been given and why?

The best writing advice I have ever received is: You can fix anything but a blank page.  In other words, worry about getting it written before you start worrying about getting it perfect.  Editing can fix any mistakes you make, as long as you get something on paper.  That sustains me on the days I feel like I don’t think I can write a sentence that makes sense.

Tell us about you new book and why we need to drop everything and get it now.

I just published All the Appearance of Goodness, the third installment of the Given Good Principles series. Here’s a blurb.

What is a young woman to do? One handsome young man has all the goodness, while the other the appearance of it.  How is she to separate the gentleman from the cad?

When Darcy joins his friend, Bingley on a trip to Meryton, the last thing on his mind is finding a wife. Meeting Elizabeth Bennet changes all that, but a rival for his affections appears from a most unlikely quarter. He must overcome his naturally reticent disposition if he is to have a chance of winning her favor.

Elizabeth’s thoughts turn to love and marriage after her sister Mary’s engagement. In a few short weeks, she goes from knowing no eligible young men, to being courted by two. Both are handsome gentleman, but one conceals secrets and the other conceals his regard. Will she determine which is which before she commits to the wrong one?

You should drop everything and get it because it is a really fun story with some unexpected twists and turns along the way. It is a feel-good tale that is a great remedy against a grey and gloomy day.

It sounds lovely - the sort of book to read with a box of chocolates and a glass of wine. What’s in store for your writing in the future? Do you have any other big projects on the horizon?

I have tons of projects on the horizon.  I have a complete Regency Romance manuscript in the drawer, ready for editing. I’m working with an editor on a science fiction trilogy that I’d like to get out sometime next year. I have another Regency Romance 90% finished and it will soon be on the editing stack.  I have an historical fantasy novel planned out, begging to writing time and a Regency Romance Novella trying to elbow its way into the schedule as well. So I’ve got plenty of projects to keep me going for a while. 

Well,  you are certainly one busy lady. I am just off to follow the link below and buy one of your books. Thank you so much for brightening our day, and good luck with all those projects.  

 Thanks so much for having me, Judith! 

You can find Maria Grace online:

email: author.MariaGrace@gmail.com.

Facebook: facebook.com/AuthorMariaGrace

OnAmazon.com: amazon.com/author/mariagrace

Amazon.co.uk:

Visit her website Random Bits of Fascination AuthorMariaGrace.com

On Twitter @WriteMariaGrace

English Historical Fiction Authors EnglishHistoryAuthors.blogspot.com

Austen Authors AustenAuthors.net

Her books are available on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.

Lifting the Victorian Tablecloth

The mid nineteenth century is within touching distances of all of us; just a couple of generations divide us and, until relatively recently, the popular notion of Victorian society has been as a morally upright, God fearing, a sexually sanitised world. Upper class women were something to be revered. Their chastity paramount, they remained largely uninformed both about human reproduction or the workings of their own bodies. Gentlemen, entertained by these ladies, perched upon spindly chairs, sipping tea from porcelain in pretty parlours, discussing topics only fitting for a lady’s ears. It was a perfect world, set apart from squalor and peopled by the genteel.

This projected image was a false one. The Victorian desire to be seen as incorruptible was a smoke screen, concealing something very different. Just as they pushed their women into corsets that entirely distorted the feminine shape, swathed their tables in thick chenille cloths and stuffed their parlours with nick-nacks to confuse and confound the eye, so did they obscure the truth of what it really meant to be a Victorian.

In their attempt to sanitise their world the Victorians introduced, among other reforms, The Obscene Publications Act of 1864. Previous to this date no distinction made between suitable and unsuitable material and pornography was available alongside other literary works. Not much pre-Victorian pornography survives today, probably because it was then, as it is now, a throwaway item very much like a cheap novel you might discard on the train.

In trying to eradicate pornography they created the very thing they were attempting to destroy. The Obscene Publications Act drove the trade underground and, in their attempt to stamp out what they regarded as inappropriate literature, the Victorians not only invented the genre of pornography itself but preserved it for posterity.

The criminal court records of the day provide fascinating reading, opening a window onto the darker side of the Victorian garden. The records and other surviving erotica, when utilised as historical evidence, throw some deeply disturbing truths onto Victoria’s proud England that include sodomy, flogging and sexual child abuse. The preservation of the chastity of upper class women came at the expense of her less fortunate, working class sisters.

This material is not for the faint hearted. Even to a modern day reader, they are strong, no-holds barred accounts and, in a world familiar with squeaky-clean images of pure Victorian childhood innocence, it is deeply disturbing. The erotica of the day makes it clear that there were prostitutes on every street corner, their average age disturbingly young. At nightfall the London parks were reputedly alive with fornicating couples, in some areas one in seven houses was a brothel or a house where rooms for sex could be hired. The estimated number of prostitutes in London varies from around 6,000 to 80,000 but most agree it equated to around one prostitute for every seven men.

So, who were the men so bent on purchasing all this illicit sex? It wasn’t, as you might think, low life villains or law breakers, it was the middle and upper classes. In venting their sexual appetites on prostitutes they were able to preserve the chastity of their own women and, those same gentlemen that earlier in the afternoon had taken tea in a lady’s parlour, after dark sought the more basic services of the working girls.

There are many surviving records, court records as I mentioned before, pamphlets etc but perhaps the most useful book is Walter, My Secret Life. This takes the form of a personal diary penned by the pseudonymous Walter, a gentleman of independent means. There is some question as to the truth behind the claim that the text was discovered among the papers of a deceased gentleman and published posthumously. The tale of a secret diary kept hidden for years and then rediscovered after his death not only provides a suitable disguise for the author but also adds a fillip to the already stimulated curiosity of the prospective reader.

My Secret Life chronicles the sexual experiences of one man and amounts to an impressive eleven volumes, although only a fragment of this is in publication today. The author was determined to experience every sexual deviance imaginable and catalogue them for posterity. We learn a lot from Walter. His frustration when women’s drawers were invented, hindering his exploration up the skirts of almost any available female borders on comical.

Read alone, the book can be mistaken for fantasy, some of the events are not only improbable but make for squeamish reading. But pornography illustrates in graphic detail what the mainstream authors of the day were forced to omit. When read alongside Dickens or Wilde, My Secret Life helps us begin to understand just what life was really like for the prostitute, Nancy from Oliver Twist and it makes clear the nature of the exploits that caused Dorian’s Grey’s portrait to be so horribly corrupted. Most authors like to illustrate the world around them but the respectable authors of Victorian England could only hint at what lay beneath the projected polished veneer their society. But, for Walter, writing for himself, there were no boundaries.

So, who were these prostitutes? The majority were lower class women; glove makers trying to feed their children, factory workers lured from the back breaking world of the factory floor by the comparative good wages and less soul destroying hours of prostitution.

STDs were rife and the widespread belief in the myth that sleeping with a virgin could cure syphilis saw an increase in the demand for young girls. As a consequence some were sold as children into the sex trade and the resulting spread of disease is horrible to contemplate. Illicit literature of the mid nineteenth century reveals a world where virginity could be purchased for few pennies or a prostitute could be subjected to acts that could not possibly be inflicted on a respectable lady. Many young women, as countless novels assure us, were taken down and ruined by some careless upper class male, outcast from society and unable to find another way. Prostitutes were ordinary women; daughters, wives, mothers; the lucky ones managed to find other work or marry and return to an honest life, others didn’t. There are records of suicides, death from STD’s, and as we are all aware, from personal assault or murdered at the hands of men like Jack the Ripper.

Although toward the end of the period strenuous efforts of reform were undertaken, most ‘respectable’ Victorians turned away from it, preferring to pretend that such atrocities were not happening under their noses. It was not part of the Victorian’s ‘official’ consciousness.

Illustrations: copyright BBC. From the series The Crimson Petal and the White

and Victorian London curtesy of Paul Getty Images