It’s February. Romance is in the air. The scent of flowers and candy hearts. The kind with sayings, reminiscent of childhood? Or a red heart-shaped box of dark chocolate truffles? This month we’re thinking about our characters’ romantic lives. D. Z. shows how three sets of characters meet in her contemporary thrillers, then gives examples of the interplay between characters in her historical series, the Wanee mysteries. Janet looks at how romance has touched the lives of her three main protagonists.
Romancing the Characters
D. Z. Church
First, I write mysteries and thrillers, not romances. So, although romance plays a part in all of my thrillers, they are, in fact, not romantic thrillers. One features three suitors, all questionable. Another a boy, now man, punished for a brother’s death. And another, the only man who can save the heroine, just happens to have killed her parents. Indeed, a motley crew. As for the heroine of each. One who discovers she isn’t who she thought she was. One trying to find closure for her brother’s death. And one holding a patent that can change the world. Come on! Mix the guys with the gals and you have a veritable hotbed for romance. How does it all turn out? Well, I guess you have to read the books: Perfidia, Booth Island and Saving Calypso.
Favorite meet lines from each:
Saving Calypso. “Last time I saw those shoulders, the owner stumbled drunk out of the car he used to kill my mother?” she snarled. “Turn and face me, Washburn. Just do it!”
Booth Island. Sturdevant’s eyes roved over my shirt and down my shorts to my sandals. Meanwhile, I studied the jagged scar over his left eye that continued into his hairline. It was new since he was cuffed and taken into custody, as were the glasses he now wore.
What if there is more than one suitor, here’s a first meet with one of the three in Perfidia: Feron grabbed my hand. I was pretty sure I hadn’t accepted, but here I was, walking behind him as though his arm was a leash. The minute we gained the dance floor, he rolled me into his arms, one hand on the small of my back, the other holding my right hand. At the first step, I knew I was in trouble.
The thing is, we all view romance through our own lenses. Oh, there are tropes we’ve come to know or have been trained to expect. The meet cute. The sudden crisis or romantic misunderstanding. The come back together ending. It’s what goes on between the tropes that matters, and further, isn’t it nice when the trope is just a wee bit off? I think no one truly likes the ongoing theme of a couple who never quite gets together despite a heap of sexual tension. The one where something tears them apart, only to find them redefining their relationship endlessly across book after book after book. Move on, already!
I do love it when an ageless romance is sorted out over the course of the series, and the parties begin a life and partnership together. For instance, I’ve always admired how Elizabeth Peters handled the marriage of Amelia Peabody and Radcliffe Emerson. Their admiration and love grow across tales seasoned by the spice of each partner’s oddities. It’s great stuff.
And hard to accomplish, particularly in a historical novel or mystery. The norms were different back when, when rules of comportment reigned. No wild parties but a few telling waltzes. A gesture. Standing close but not too close. The dance of language. It takes a deft touch to get it perfect, flirtatious enough but in keeping with the times. And, of course, retaining the mores as the relationship heats up.
From Unbecoming a Lady:
“Cora, please, if your inquiries are pursuing either your mother’s disappearance or Michael Thomas’s head-bashing, stop now. It is unbecoming a lady.”
“Is that what you think of me?”
“That you are a lady? Are you not?”
Grabbing her button and package, Cora twirled out the door, confused by the look on Mr. Kanady’s expressive face.
From A Confluence of Enemies:
“And you? I do like the way you have your hair this evening. Not quite up though, is it?”
“Do you spend your days fixing on things you can say to annoy me?”
“Generally,” he grinned, his broad masculine mouth higher on the right, highlighting a thin scar on his upper lip. “Sometimes, I just imagine kissing you.”
From One Horse Too Many: Cora touched Kanady’s hat. His blue-blue eyes followed the movement of her hand as she ran her index finger lightly around the band.
Oh, my!
And so it goes for Miss Countryman and Mr. Kanady. From Cora’s newest about-to-be-published adventure, Of Waterworks and Sin:
“Easily. Everyone in this town tells you everything. And you have a fierce nose for trouble. It will be like braiding that hair of yours, which you can do with your eyes shut.”
“You have been gawking up at my bedroom window again?’
He grinned. “Like a moonstruck puppy.”
“You would flatter me and say anything to get me to take on your newspaper while you are out endangering your life. Do not lie.”
The most challenging bit of all is maintaining just the right tone. Cora and Kanady are light with each other. But their affection is always apparent and muted by Cora’s desire for a life of adventure, learning, and mystery without the weight of marriage or children. Yet Kanady and her other suitor, Dr. Shaw, woo her despite being obstacles to that desire. Is there a way forward?
I hope you’ll enjoy finding out.
Catch up on Cora and Kanady before book 4 comes out. The first three ebooks in the Wanee Mystery series are just $5.97 for a short time.
Ah—to romance amid thrills, mayhem, and murder.
A Fine Romance?
Janet Dawson
Jeri Howard is having a long engagement. Very long. In fact, I’m not sure she will get married. After all, she’s had a mixed track record with men.
In the first book in the series, Kindred Crimes, private investigator Jeri was recently divorced from Sid Vernon, an Oakland police detective. At the time I began writing the book, having a protagonist who had a relationship with a cop was common in the niche inhabited by female private eyes. It’s a way for the PI to get information from the cops.
Jeri’s relationship with her ex was somewhat thorny in that first book. But time heals, right? Or at least it’s supposed to. Jeri and Sid have evolved through the fourteen books in the series. At least they’re not sniping at each other.
Jeri’s had other relationships. There’s Mark, the guy with a prison sentence in his past, who appears in Kindred Crimes. A fling, but no future. And Alex, the Navy lieutenant commander from Till The Old Men Die. Nice guy, but he got transferred to another duty station. In Nobody’s Child, she meets a doctor, Kaz. Also a nice guy, but he joins Doctors Without Borders and goes off to other climes. Then there’s David, a cutthroat businessman she meets in Where the Bodies Are Buried. He’s interesting in a bad boy sort of way. But not for the long run. Finally, in Bit Player, Jeri meets Dan Westbrook, who writes travel books. He has some staying power. He’s still around and they’ve gone from dating to living together to kinda sorta agreeing to get engaged.
You see, it’s the problem of the inconvenient spouse. I have my hands full detailing Jeri’s adventures in various cases. I don’t necessarily want to explain what Dan is doing in every book. Since he’s a writer who specializes in books about hiking and outdoor adventures in various locales, I can send Dan off to do research for his next opus.
Now, other mystery writers have married protagonists. And they do it well. For example, I give you Heather Haven’s Lee Alvarez, a Silicon Valley PI. She gets married during the course of the series and her husband pitches in with various investigations. The same with Marcia Muller’s long-running series featuring PI Sharon McCone, whose husband is often out of town, I might add. But Jeri Howard? Don’t look for a wedding invitation just yet.
As for the protagonist in my Jill McLeod California Zephyr series, set in the early 1950s, Jill is unmarried and lives at home with her parents. She was engaged, but her fiancé was killed in the Korean War. At loose ends, figuring out what she wants to do, she becomes a Zephyrette, a train hostess, on the historic California Zephyr. The requirements of Jill’s job specify that she must remain single—or lose the job she has grown to love. In the first book, Death Rides the Zephyr, Jill meets a young man named Mike Scolari, a passenger on the train. As the series progresses, they are dating, but neither one of them wants to get married any time soon. Mike is going to college on the GI Bill, and wants to get his degree and get settled into his profession. And Jill enjoys riding the rails.
When I was doing research for the first book, I interviewed two women who’d been Zephyrettes. They told me the shelf life of a Zephyrette was less than two years and usually young women left the job to get married. And frequently they married a passenger or a train crewman. That’s what these two women did. One married a doctor she’d met as a passenger on the train, while the other married a brakeman.
Kay Dexter, introduced in my novel The Sacrificial Daughter, is a geriatric care manager. She is an older woman who’s never been married. She’s quite busy in her career, but since relocating to her hometown in California’s Sierra Nevada, she’s connected with someone she knew in high school. Sam has been married and is now divorced. He’s a professor at the local college and now he and Kay are in a relationship, enjoying each other’s company. Sam is what Kay calls “middle-aged sexy.” I’m having fun with that, and so is Kay.
A NEW FEATURE FROM YOUR WORDSMITHS!
From D. Z.:
This month, I’m featuring familiar words used differently in the 1800s.
First, the word style: “Something disturbs you?” Cora asked, sorry now that she had bothered to wear her newest dress design adapted from a rotogravure that appeared in the Chicago Tribune newspaper. She even took the time to weave a ribbon through her thick chestnut hair. Despite her efforts, Mr. Kanady did not notice or comment on her style, further indicating that something absorbed him.
Nearly, barely, and gingerly, and others: It was not uncommon for the “ly” to disappear from these adverbs so that one might say:
“You’re near thirteen, born in the late spring of 1864.”
“Her sister could bare keep track of her doings.”
Cora held the derringer by the butt and set it ginger in the basket. “I pray I will not need it.”
* * *
From Janet:
I’m working on a historical novel, set in the 1870s. In the course of writing the first draft, I discovered that one of my secondary characters has a crush on another character. Her younger sister is quite happy to let everyone know that.
Having a crush on someone sounds like such a 20th century term. Off to the internet to do research. Aha! Evidently in the 1880s, the word crush or mash became popular to refer to an infatuation. But even earlier, dating to the 1820s, there was spoony, defined as being foolish or sentimentally enamored.
Spoony! I love it. And it definitely sounds like something that younger sister would say. So she does.