Hard Hat Days

“Work in progress.”

In your mind, please place this admonition over all the blogs detailing my work on the Six Brothers project.

For instance, everything I professed in yesterday’s post about voice and style and “needless daisies” should be disregarded as hogwash.

I was wrong.

Oh, it was an honest mistake. I believed everything I was spouting and was fully prepared to embark on the short, dramatic, punchy sentences…

But, then, I dared to have a peek at some of today’s bestselling historical romance authors and found that needless daisies were in fact very much in season.

Not groves and groves of them, but they were indeed spattered about quite liberally.

After squeaking in utter glee, I spent the rest of the work day defining all sorts of wonderfully exacting details for my characters.

It was delightful.

But it also meant I needed to hammer up the “Work in Progress” sign first thing this morning.

That done and with apologies made and hopefully accepted, I leave you to your Friday.

Until tomorrow…

Chloe

The Brit in my Attic... A Celebration of British Slang

Got rope?

The morning is thundering at me. It’s unnerving and I wish it would stop… *all said in a porcelain-chipped British voice of an old grand dame of a crumbling manor house.*

???

Yeah, I agree with you there. I don’t know where that came from but I’ll try to restrain the chippy old woman from popping up again. May I borrow some rope?

A storm is indeed brewing outside my window panes this morning. The sky is rock-colored, the wind prickly. The television is muted turned to the local radar station, for that is what one with panic-issues does when Mother Nature gets grumbly.

I haven’t a clue as to what to write about this morning. (Could you tell?) So, I’m just letting my fingers wander across the keyboard, and we’ll see what madness they drag out… Flee now while you are able.

Perhaps the English lady with cold fingers and violet-tinted hair who is currently tied to a chair in my mind’s attic is a reflection on my utter wonder at being able to pull off acceptably well the whole Brit-speak in “Ravenscar?” While I hardly went all BBC in the short story, I did do more than dabble in the English colloquialisms we all find so charming and fun.

American-speak can be so vulgar and hard at times. The British seem to imbibe a dash of sophistication to even their most cutting remarks.

An example, you demand?

Well, if I must. (Apologies. The grand dame, again… Does anyone have a spare iron shackle or two? I do believe she chewed through the rope.)

Ass is arse.

Shit is shite.

Fucking is sodding. (The curse, not the act of actual fucking. One must be precise in these things.)

Nut is nutter. (Crazy person, not a pistachio.)

A variety of American-isms for “You’re a real fuck!” (derogatory, not congratulatory) can be wrapped in a simple wanker.

See? Isn’t it delightfully more amusing to go off on someone when you let the little old grand dame in your head do the cursing?

If you are so lucky as to not have one such nutter in your attic, you may borrow mine.

I find a cattle prod is most helpful.

Until tonight…

Chloe