Manuscript and partials mailed yesterday, priority mail, so hopefully they'll have wended their way to the opposite side of the country by the middle of the week.

Meanwhile, I have a truly nasty cold, and I don't get my usual Monday and Tuesday off this week, because I'm coordinating the biggest event of the year at work on Wednesday. So for now I'm taking it easy. But I'm taking Thursday and Friday off instead, which'll give me six straight days away from the House of Soulsuck, and one of the things I'm going to do then is start the next novel. The plot is starting to fall into my place in my head, and I'm looking forward to digging back in.

A question, based on the plot as it stands so far: Supposing you had a woman who was in an unhappy marriage, not because she or her husband was a cruel or horrible person, but just because they weren't well-matched but didn't realize it until it was too late, this being 1811 and divorce for a little thing like incompatibility not really an option. Further suppose this woman developed a completely platonic friendship with another man, and occasionally wistfully thought how nice it would be to get the same level of respect from and have the same camaraderie with her husband. Conveniently for my plot, the husband dies. At some point thereafter (how long thereafter to be determined), the woman and the other man find themselves thrown together under perilous conditions, at which time they become lovers.

What I'm trying to work out is how long a period I need between the husband's death and the woman (Anna) beginning her affair with Man #2 (Jack). In several ways, the plot will go easier if it's quickly--as in, inside a month. If I drag it out too long, I have to find a reason to keep Anna in Portugal/Spain when logic would dictate that, her husband dead, she'd return home to England. Also, since I'm planning that Anna get pregnant with Jack's child, if the interval is short, I get some nice awkwardness with her knowing full well it's not her husband's baby, but others not being quite so sure. My only question is, will readers sympathize with a woman who sleeps with and falls in love with another man so quickly after her husband's death, given that their marriage was in bad shape? Because if readers don't sympathize with the heroine, I'm kinda screwed.

My only question is, will readers sympathize with a woman who sleeps with and falls in love with another man so quickly after her husband's death, given that their marriage was in bad shape?

Readers forgave Scarlett O'Hara for far, far worse. The trick is, you have to make the reader commit to the heroine and her goals before she does the questionable thing. So she shows up, she's a good woman in a bad marriage, she's trying to make things right, and he dies. At that point the reader is rooting for her and wants her to be happy.

I would sympathize, Susan, and it's not the first time I've read a book based on a similar type of incident. If it could be a comfort type of thing, most especially, that would be good. She ought to be sad her husband died, you know? So, a little comfort that turns to something else? That's not a bad thing.

I read about Betsy finding plot nibbles and went away thinking. I think my muse thinks its in competition with Betsy's muse, because it started talking plot, too. Now, I'm going to go write some more. I am excited. I thought I was going to bomb at this thing.

Liese, I used to visit a church on the Navajo Res. My parents were friends with the pastors when my parents pastored a church in Flag. Do you, by any chance, know [a certain particular pair of people by the name of (edited out for a faint sense of privacy)] Yazzie? A pretty common name, I know, but the two together might ping. I don't remember where the church was located, though not more than a few hours from Flagstaff.

I would sympathize, Susan, and it's not the first time I've read a book based on a similar type of incident. If it could be a comfort type of thing, most especially, that would be good. She ought to be sad her husband died, you know? So, a little comfort that turns to something else? That's not a bad thing.

She's sad that he died, of course, but at the same time feels a certain guilty gladness that she's not tied him for the next fifty years, though she's horrified at herself for even thinking such a thing. And the affair with Jack isn't so much about comfort as the classic love sped up by Mortal Peril. Alone behind enemy lines, he gets shot protecting her, she nurses him back to health, significant glances become significant touches, and there you are.

Readers forgave Scarlett O'Hara for far, far worse. The trick is, you have to make the reader commit to the heroine and her goals before she does the questionable thing.

True, and I can think of at least one romance that pulled off a heroine and hero falling for each other while she was still married to another man very successfully indeed. (Mary Jo Putney's Shattered Rainbows.) She didn't get them together quite so quickly in the aftermath, but IIRC they did acknowledge their mutual attraction before the husband died, which doesn't happen in mine.

I'm in the camp of "if the character is a sympathetic type in a situation that is no more than 50% her fault? She's going to have people rooting for her."

Go, 'suela!

I have a cold. It sort of burst about half an hour ago. I'm trying to shove it out of my system so I can function tomorrow....

What they said, Susan. As long as we're rooting for Anna, we'll forgive her all kinds of things.

My word count for the weekend == 0! I can find all kinds of things to blame (work, homework, car death), but mostly it's the fault of not writing.

Susan, I don't think you'll have any trouble with the reader's sympathy, especially if the subject itself is brought up within the story (the heroine's or hero's own doubts, some other character being a schmuck about the thing.)

Also, if people believe that the baby is the husband's posthumous child, they might look upon Anna's marriage as a very practical move on her part, right?

Re. NaNoWriMo: No more progress in terms of word count, but I've been pondering how the thing is going to play out. Whatever happens to this novel, I think that NaNoWriMo is going to be a healthy thing for me as a writer, as the thing that gets me stuck most often is the feeling that I have to get things perfect out of the box.

As a writer, it took me a long time to realize that 50% of my strengths lie in being a good re-writer. So in a first draft I try to get good bones laid down, don't spend a whole lot of time looking back or making sentences pretty instead of getting information and emotion down there on the page. I'll write digressions and flashbacks down, no matter how long they are -- they help me picture where the character is coming from, or at, and they can be excised (or moved to a better place plotwise or expanded into their own section) entirely.

Anything worth writing is worth overwriting, so long as you have the Red Pen of Death ready for the edit phase. :-)

(And of course, I know very good writers whose first drafts are impeccable from the get-go. Figuring out that this wasn't my style helped a whole lot.)

Also, if people believe that the baby is the husband's posthumous child, they might look upon Anna's marriage as a very practical move on her part, right?

Well, she's not going to marry the other guy right away--I haven't worked out all the details yet, but I'm going to have various circumstances tear them apart before she tells him she's pregnant, and possibly before she's sure of it herself. And it's going to take them (and me!) some time to solve all the barriers to their marriage. She's an officer's widow and an heiress; he's a sergeant who hopes to go home someday and take over his parents' inn in Pastoral English County to Be Named Later.

So she's somewhat lucky that people will assume the baby is her husband's, because it spares her from being viewed as a Fallen Woman until everything gets sorted out, but she feels guilty over the fact that if the baby is a boy (which I'll probably make it be, because why spare a chance to add guilt and angst?) and viewed as her husband's legitimate child, he'll be heir presumptive to a barony, and she doesn't think it right that he might inherit under false pretenses. Throw in the husband's mother who just wants to treasure what she thinks is her grandchild and it's a regular guilt-o-rama.

Susan, Mary Balogh did almost the exact same sort of plot in Web of Love, though with the twist that the widow had truly loved her husband, the person reached for for post-battle comfort was his attractive good friend.

You might want to check it out to see how she balanced it all and made the characters ones you could feel for throughout.