Just because a "horse is a horse," doesn't mean he's comfortable. Although, I'm afraid that makes me like Catherine the Great, now.

Brainstorming help requested for a tough scene:

Anna has just learned that her husband Sebastian is dead. She's still mostly in the stunned disbelief stage. But because her marriage was miserable, some little part of her is already chanting "Free! Free! Free!" She naturally feels guilty about this, because Sebastian was far from capital-E Evil--he was just a pompous git, and no husband for a woman with Anna's brains and spirit.

With her is her cousin's wife Helen, the best friend she has among the officer's wives. Helen is a brisk, matter-of-fact sort. She's a bit older--30 to Anna's 22. She and her husband Alex are the only ones in the regiment who realize just how bad the Anna-Sebastian marriage was, and because of the family tie they're firmly on Anna's side.

So I've got these women alone in a room together a few pages into Chapter Two, and I want them to have a conversation that'll let me fill the readers in on why Anna married Sebastian and what went wrong, whether through actual dialogue or by setting Anna to musing about it. We saw in Chapter One that Anna was so miserable that she was half-trying to provoke Sebastian into at least a temporary separation--make him angry enough to send her back to England--and I'd like to bring that out a little more, have her revisit her thoughts and actions of Chapter One.

But so far every attempt I've made to get Anna and Helen talking has fallen flat. It either winds up perfectly conventional, no undercurrents whatsoever, or something perilously close to this:

Helen: Woohoo! Your nasty husband is dead!
Anna: I can't rejoice at death. It'd be Wrong.
Helen: C'mon. I know he made you miserable.
Anna: Well, OK, he did. Woohoo! I'm going to (Regency) Disneyland!

Any ideas?

Hmm. That's a poser. Maybe it could end up with Anna grieving, not for Sebastian but the might-have-beens, the happy marriage she wishes she'd had with him, etc. She could also admit to Helen that she feels like a monster because she knows she should be sad, not relieved.

Does that help? It could take the "Woohoo" factor out of the scenario.

Ooh, I can work with that. Thanks, Anne! The trick is getting there, of course, but I've got another few ideas that I'm going to try.

Susan, maybe Anna could confide in Helen that she hasn't yet had an opportunity to have a good cry, and Helen could point out that maybe opportunity isn't the issue.

Or Anna is feeling as though she should grieve, Helen says that not all losses are tragedies, and Anna can admit that there is a part of her that is jubilant rather than saddened. A bit of mutual admission that Sebastian had his good points but not enough of them. Anna can say something like, "When I married him I knew he was a good man, but I was too young to realize that isn't enough."

Nice, Cindy and connie. Thanks!

Stolen from cleolinda, "How to Write Good" should amuse.

Oh, and I need some ideas for a good last name for someone who's very proud of the fact his ancestors came to England with William the Conqueror--i.e. French roots, but sufficiently anglicized to not get confused with the handful of reallyo trulyo French characters running around in my story. So far all I've come up with is Delacorte, but I don't think that's quite what I'm looking for. His first name is George, FWIW.

Fitzhugh? Fitzgerald?

De Vere? Defoe or Dafoe?

I found this: [link]