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  Virginia Taylor - Author

 

Ladies Who Lunch

28/10/2014

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After five years of steady writing I had finished eight long historical romances, four short medical romances, one romantic suspense, and one women’s fiction. I like to tell other people never to give in, but I did. Clearly not saleable, my stories were missing something and so was I – real life.

 I’m not good at twiddling my thumbs. I could already do every craft ever invented, except lace-making. Bored silly, I finally I accepted the invitation to be another of the Ladies-Who-Lunch. After the first time, I didn’t think I would go again because the only thing more boring than doing nothing is listening to tedious gossip. Not a single literary conversation was to be had with ex-footballers’ wives, women married to doctors, lawyers, business executives, wine makers, and estate agents. After a couple of hours of listening to who was sleeping with whom, I needed to go home and read a book about people whose lives didn’t revolve around filling a day with nothing – which was all I had to do. . . .

 So, again I went out with the LWL. And again. And again. I still didn’t know the people were who were sleeping with the other people. To me, they were just names, no one from my world of normal people who had husbands and children and who wanted to sell the books they (I) had written. But it seemed I was now a regular – expected to be at every lunch.

 One day I was sitting at a round table for 16 and everyone except me was talking on their mobile phone. I talked to myself for a while but I’d already heard all my jokes. Seems most of the ladies were calling other LWL and asking them to come to us. Great. 31 women on their phones talking to whoever wasn’t there—31 women wanting to discuss the affairs of even more women. For a while I thought everyone was playing away from home but me, but to be fair, most of the LWL in my group were suddenly single (which is why they had time for lunch) or raring to try a third marriage.

 Since I wasn’t looking for another husband, for a while I couldn’t understand my role. I was put straight by my ‘Bestie.’ She said with sincerity plastered across her face, ‘I don’t like going out with good-looking women because they compete with me for men. You don’t.’ Then I got it. I was the wing-woman. I was supposed to entertain the table-hopping bores while the single LWL bargained for a bigger house.

 I had to give out a lot of sympathy to the losers who were never going to get the good-looking (they all were, trust me) LWL. ‘I’ve asked her out five times and she always says no. Why is she talking to that fat guy?’ Sob sob. The first few times I was polite and kind. ‘Blah blah, don’t worry, you’ll find the right person eventually.’ However, everyone has a breaking point. I started telling the truth. ‘Look, that fat guy is filthy rich and she has two children to support in luxury.’ Men are not as practical as women. Didn’t the hopefuls ever wonder why rich men have good-looking wives?

 One day I walked into a bar with a horse and a goat, sorry, with my Bestie, who was used to stopping conversations when she entered any room, and a guy the size of a jockey sidled over. ‘Can I buy youse ladies a drink?’

‘Not for me,’ I said, but he didn’t hear me. He couldn’t take his eyes from Her. She accepted a drink but we’d really stopped off to visit the loo. When I got back, the jockey was saying (because Bestie was off her bar stool and had her bag clutched under one arm), ‘If I could have a woman like you, I would die happy.’

 She said in WTTE ‘that’s very sweet and I am sure you will one day.’

 I got outside and crunched over, laughing. I said, ‘A woman like you? What does he mean, a woman like you? He saw you across a crowded bar and he read your character?’

 She didn’t understand what I meant and so she explained that she was used to attention because she was beautiful. I should have known she wouldn’t see my point, and I suppose I did know, but she had a good heart, despite the depth of her thoughts.

 Not too long after that, I was in a hotel having lunch with Bestie and her greatest competitor, who might have been even better looking. Their conversations were very entertaining because Rocky was quite smart and she could get in low hits unobtrusively. I wish I could remember some, because I could use them in books. Anyway, we’d talked for about half an hour over an entrée and the others had muttered about no drinks being sent to the table yet. This was always one of my greatest embarrassments.

 I’ve got a ‘thing’ about being bought a drink by a man who presumes that women with women will drink any old thing he chooses to send to a table. It annoys the hell out of me. Yes, I know the drinks were never sent because of me but I’m still allowed to be offended about the presumption that none of the other LWL ever seemed to feel. That’s an aside.

 Three drinks arrived after our plates were taken and the waiter pointed to the contributor. The champagne was acceptably French and so he was allowed to come and sit with us for a minute. Often my role was to get rid of these guys but this one began with the right words. He said, ‘I’ve never seen two such beautiful women at one table.’

 I said, ‘In a fair world, that would lose you points.’

 He said, glancing at me with a wrinkled brow, ‘No one should lose points for telling the truth. They are beautiful.’

 Real heroes are gallant even when faced with the more ordinary of my sex. In any event, I had enough fodder for my stories and I hadn’t discovered a real life by lunching. By now I knew enough about makeup to style the plainest woman and enough about clothes to know where to get exclusives at half price. I knew when you wanted a free meal you admitted to a birthday and when you wanted another free meal, you told the birthday girl that she should be treating everyone else.

 However, my real life was writing, not sitting around with botoxed beauties. If I couldn’t sell my manuscripts, clearly I was doing something wrong. Were the stories weird or was the writing at fault? I decided I would learn all I could, though of course I thought I knew everything.

 As it happened, I didn’t. And so began my love affair with the craft of writing.

1 Comment

October 23rd, 2014

21/10/2014

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Just Talking

12/10/2014

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 If you’ve read the review of my first published book, Dr No Commitment, you will have seen that one reviewer said the book contained the best dialogue she has read in a year. She went on to say in her full review that she kept reading on because she wanted to hear the next thing that came out of my hero’s and heroine’s mouths. I was not only thrilled about this comment, but a little stunned. I thought they were just talking.

 So, because I love dialogue in books, I’m always a bit annoyed when the only clever thing a heroine says is in her own head.

 “Are you new in town?” asks the hero.

The heroine answers, “Yes.” And boy, am I glad I came here because aren’t you just a yummy hunk of a man?

“From the city?”

“Sydney.” Anyone can see you aren’t from a big town. Your pants are too tight. Well, pants can’t be too tight when you’ve got a great tush, but just turn around and ahhh . . . “Could you help me fix this fence?”

“You city girls sure aren’t handy.”

Handy. I could be very handy if I could just get my hands on  . . .

 Is she boring or boring? What if . . .?

 “Are you new in town?” asks the hero.

“Do you call a farm in the middle of nowhere, town?”

“Only figuratively speaking. If I asked you if you were new here, I’d be a bit of a dill, wouldn’t I, when I know that my uncle owned this property until a month ago? Unless you were hiding inside while I was visiting, of course.”

“Why would I hide? Is this story a romantic suspense?”

“It’s a rural romance, and you are unhandy, and I’m here so that you can look at my behind and eventually fall in love with my brain.”

“Well then, sweet cheeks. Turn around.”

“Was that my line or yours?”

“Darn. Someone forgot the dialogue tags,” she said, glancing around as if the tags might be behind her.

He laughed. (nope, not a comma because you can’t talk and laugh – try and you’ll spit everywhere) “So, where’s this computer that needs fixing.”

“Computer? I don’t know that you need a fantastic body if you’ve got a brain.”

“That’s sexist.” He put his hands on his hips. “You’ll have brains and a great body. In a few more lines, the writer will have you explaining that you’re only here to write your thesis on gluteraldahide, if that’s how you spell it.”

 That’s nonsense, of course, but more fun than a whole lot of thinking. I loved writing the dialogue for my second book, Losing Patients, because my hero and heroine, Sam and Bree, constantly spar. The dialogue below is from a scene when she has just burnt her evening meal and he turns up for a date she didn’t think she had with him.
                                                            ****
 Too tired and dispirited to begin another meal, she took a shower. On her way back to the bedroom, she heard a movement. Heart thumping, dressed in a towel and with dripping hair, she slowly peered around the doorway, preparing to confront the serial murderer and rapist in her sitting area.

‘Hi,’ said Sam, large as life. He pushed his hands deep into his pockets, hunching his shoulders slightly. ‘The house stinks.’

‘Thanks.’ She straightened. ‘You’d be the smell inspector, would you?’

‘I knocked and called, but now I realise why you didn’t hear me.’ His eyes indicated her dripping hair.

‘You could at least apologise for scaring me.’

‘You scared me,’ he said, glancing toward the sink. ‘I thought you’d incinerated your last date.’

Hm. I think I showed that rather than telling.  

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Skin Deep

8/10/2014

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The standard romance these days usually features a beautiful woman who meets a handsome man, sees muscles and thinks of sex. The handsome man sees a beautiful woman with long legs, and he thinks of sex. Sometimes they even like each other, but I don't know why. They don't talk. They think - mainly about the other's body parts but often about how clever and wonderful the other is. They have no basis for this opinion - if you ignore that each is good looking. 

After reading a couple of pages of this I put down a book and find something else to do. I don't know about other people, but I couldn't fall for a man who didn't stimulate me mentally. I want to know he's at least as smart as me - though now I come to think of it, I had lots of boyfriends who were good to look at. The first was as smart as a rock but at the time I thought that was funny. He was sort of a feminist experience for me, a role reversal of the rich old man with the stunning young wife, not that I was rich or old at the time, or thinking about marriage. When I went out with him, women's jaws dropped, figuratively speaking. 

The funny part was that I was the only one who knew he was a mental midget, because he was so good looking that women were too intimidated by his looks to try a conversation with him. He was also taken with his looks, and so we didn't last very long together. However, my experience with him taught me that if I homed into the best looking guy at parties, I did pretty well. 

In real life, women are scared of handsome men, but handsome men are not necessarily dumb. The strange thing is that the best looking men don't seem to chase beautiful women. It's hard to work out the psychology there but I've also noted that beautiful women aren't too interested in handsome men, but that might be because of the fight for the mirror in the morning. So, I don't write heroes whose first impression of the woman he is about to fall in love with is that she is beautiful - not normally.

However, I am at this time trying to get Charlotte, the third of my historical romances, into shape. Charlotte is the only beautiful heroine I've written and she is beautiful so that I can show how little looks matter in the long run. You see, my hero is even more beautiful. Each has been damaged by being beautiful and each has discovered that looks are not as important as character . . . but I'm not telling the story here. I'm just saying that I don't use either a beautiful man or woman in a story just as throwaway line. They need more than skin deep beauty.

I meant to be talking about dialogue here, but I sidetracked myself again. I'll get there, another day . . .
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All Right? Fine.

2/10/2014

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During the years while I wasn't submitting manuscripts, I judged writing contests. I am a woman with a low pain threshold, and sometimes the judging was difficult. A judge is supposed to read the entire entry before deciding how to score. However, after reading many, many entries I discovered that if a character in the beginning of story asked "Are you all right?" and another character answered, "fine," I was pretty sure the story wouldn't take flight from there.

You might wonder how often these words were written into first chapters and I'll give you the answer. Invariably. Only the good stories avoided situations where that question arose. Last week, I almost read a published historical romance that began that way. The writer also used the snapping-barking-groaning dialogue tags. Her hero fisted quite a few things but not the, cough, expected thing. The heroine had a fear of men which was clearly her conflict, but she described her terror so often that I wanted to punch her, which is embarrassing to admit. 

Wondering if I'm unnecessarily picky, today I started reading another historical romance astonishing enough to cause me to look up the writer, and I read her reviews. Enlightening. She had all five star reviews, except for a couple of twos. One said, and I'll paraphrase, I normally don't like historical romances but this one is good. The characters just talk normally, and the story doesn't give any historical details. This makes people read historicals because then they're not boring. 

That was good to know. By the same logic, the reviewer would prefer mysteries without any mysterious parts to fret about, and suspense with no scary bits. This clearly makes a writer's job easier. So, now I intend to accept that English aristocrats in every era ate scones for breakfast, mainly topped with jam, butter, and cream. I will not flinch when I read that in the olden days, people added sweet cream to tea and I will not raise my eyebrows to hear that in Regency times, people had three meals a day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, the latter with two or three courses, ending with dessert. 

Why would I quibble about gentlemen standing around ballroom floors with glasses of champagne in hand? That's what they do now, or they would if they had balls. And if I'm ever confused as to women's fashion in the 1860s, I will be safe in the knowledge that as soon as the Regency ended, women wore bustles, sometimes with horsehair crinolines, skipping those in between times when they didn't, because I wouldn't want to bore a reader. 

As to aristocratic titles, if the father had a title, of course the daughter would be Lady Whoever, and if a man was a duke - well, they all are these days - naturally the heroine wouldn't want to treat him too formally and so she could call him Lord Someone, or by his first name. 

I'm not going to bother about research. It's much more fun to guess. 

And, yes. I'm fine, even if you haven't asked if I'm all right.  




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    Virginia Taylor is an Australian writer of contemporary romantic comedy, romantic suspense, historical romance, short stories, and children's stories.  

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