Betrothals and Marriage Contracts

When I'm writing, I usually just put "[CHECK]" at the end of a sentence when I'm not sure I have the historical details exactly right, or when I don't want to bother looking up where hemlines and waistlines were in 1811 vs. 1812. However, when I was working on Madeleine and Ferguson's story last night (yes, I wrote after work! score!), I realized I'm at a point in their saga where I need to take a step back and do some research. Fudging the details in a first draft is all well and good when the details relate to a type of fabric; it's a much bigger issue when your whole story hinges on how betrothal contracts worked, because if it turns out they don't work the way you thought they did, your story may never be right again.

So, it's research time for me -- which is too bad, because I really just want to keep writing. But perhaps this is a lesson that I should do this type of research sooner; I knew about one hundred pages ago that this was coming, and if I had discovered then that the twist could not possibly work, I would have written the past hundred pages with another goal in mind. Fingers crossed that the betrothal contract is sound, or I will be one unhappy camper.

Ferguson and Madeleine -- the Story (Finally) Continues

I finished editing AN INCONVENIENT MARRIAGE yesterday, and while it would be nice to take a break, there's no rest for the wicked (or rather, no rest for those who dream of publication). So, I woke up early this morning and spent an hour at Starbucks before going into the office so that I could focus on Book Two.

The task for today was to reread what I had written of Ferguson and Madeleine's story so that I can jump back into the first draft where I left off in March. The Golden Heart hoopla and all of the chaos with my day job took its toll on Ferguson and Madeleine, and they've been chilling in limbo for the past six weeks. So imagine my delight when I picked up the manuscript again and realized that I already had 177 pages written; my memory thought that it was ~100 pages, so I'm much further into the book than I thought I was.

Even better, I genuinely like most of what I've written. While there are things that I will need to go back and change (including the addition of a whole bunch of historical detail; the first draft is full of incomplete phrases like, "Madeleine paused, savoring the taste of [taste] on her tongue," where I've used brackets to indicate a missing detail that I need to figure out), I'm very happy with the characters themselves. In fact, I adore them both and want only the best for them, and so I'm going to have to embrace the dark side while I put them through another 200 pages of torment before granting their happily-ever-after.

I'll keep you posted on their progress, but sleep is vital if I'm going to help them along their merry way tomorrow...