The Authoritative Voice?

*clears throat and begins in a most professorly manner…*

When writing Historical Romance you must not only sound as if an historian is perched upon your shoulder whispering factual sundries into your ear. You must sound as if your muse has wed the dear fellow and bore a child together.

However…

When your muse is a dog who has been neutered longer than you, and when no worth-his-salt historian could, would or should suffer your company for longer than a day, problems arise in this treatise.

In this case, stumbling blind through the process is your only option. Do so in an authoritative voice and a wary eye to the exits and you should be fine.

Should.

I’ll let you know if by the luck of the literary gods I ever survive myself.

Thank you and good day.

Until tomorrow…

Chloe

Broken & Spooned

A broken gnat trapped under a spoon.

I could leave it there, you know? Let you dangle, scratch your head at the utter stupidity of the image. 

But I’m a kind broken gnat and seeing as how I’m no longer stuck under polished silverware I figured I’d explain.

Last night I went to dinner at a very nice restaurant with the entire family.

The food was good, the company better and all was merry and bright… except for my gnatness.

Inconsequential, broken headed me pinned down in a restaurant with panic eating at my gnat bones (Do gnats even have bones? Not the point, I suppose.)

Anyhow, I survived. Played it off pretty well, too. But, truth is, I was a gnat. Keep it to yourselves though. Need to keep that super cool Chloe Stowe illusion going.

Yeah, right.

Until tomorrow…

Chloe, the Belittled

How to Fake It

"When Harry Met Sally" (1989)

How do you fake it?

No, I’m not talking orgasmic bliss a la Meg Ryan in “When Harry Met Sally.” There will be no “Yes! Yes!”-ing at Chloe’s table this morning. (More’s the pity, right? *winks*)

I’m speaking of how a writer fakes a location really, really good… where a reader by the end of a story dubs you as a native of the place you’ve never been.

Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as picking a name out of the world atlas “hat” and Wikipedia-ing it (although Wikipedia does have its place, despite what some experts think.)

It takes intimate knowledge to make a place real to your audience. Such as…

-How does the city smell during midday? Do food trucks offering regional delicacies fill the city-goer’s senses, or does the lingering though slight stink from the paper plant up the river rule the aroma-waves?

-What kind of birds or insects fill the locale’s skies at sunset? Do bats swarm at twilight? Or is the simple, lonesome call of an owl beginning his night’s work the only sign of aviary life? Are there mosquitoes? Are there lightning bugs? Do crickets and tree frogs serenade the rising of the moon?

-Over breakfast at a local café, what talk would be overheard? Would there most likely be spirited rants about college football or heated debates over the mayor’s third arrest for public indecency? Are economic times hard or is the workforce thriving? What kind of accent would you hear?

These kinds of locale intimacies are the key to faking it like a native.

Best bets for finding out these juicy tidbits of place include…

-Travel blogs by ordinary blokes (a traveler to a strange place is bound to notice the paper mill stink and the locals obsession with all things Crimson Tide),

-Lonely Planet (great local color repository), local newspapers (what is the city council going to do about all those darn bats?)

-YouTube (raw, vacation footage can be key in giving the writer a sense of “been there, done that”).

Faking it… it’s hard but it’s a load of fun. And remember, play it like Meg Ryan and give it your table-pounding all.

Until tonight…

Chloe