(no subject)

[erastes]

Ranty McRant.

Ok - I've had it. I think it was jundiamanti who blew a stack about this recently and I'm simply going to reiterate what she said but not as eloquently.

I AM SICK TO DEATH of getting links via various newsletters to historical fiction about England-written by the non-English - which is AU at best.

It's insulting, and how would American's for example feel if I had a Regency character getting off the boat at Ellis Island and looking up at the skyscrapers there and riding in a carriage across the Brooklyn Bridge? Or took liberties with the Native American culture, or simply didn't care what date the War of Independence ended? - After all - who cares, right?

The book that sparked this head explosion is "The Harlot's Daughter" which - simply judging by the excerpt and the blurb is the biggest load of Hollywood BILGE I've seen for a long time. "the reader has done the research," gushes one reviewer (and the gushiness and overpraising of reviewers is another rant to be saved for another day, I'm full enough of bile as it is, thank you) and I'd say yes, she's done some sort of research, but judging by the errors in the timeline and the historical crap she comes out with - she's simply read someone else's historical novel on Joan of WINDSOR (NOT Weston) as she calls her and has decided to write about her.

For a START Joan of Windsor was married to a bloke called Robert Sterke, so who the bloody hell Justin Lamonte is I don't know - perhaps some pop star?

No. That's enough. Head is Splodey enough and I want to have a nice weekend. *STUMPS OFF*

Comments

[beauty-seeker.livejournal.com]

i wouldn't be happy if someone wrote bad fiction dealing with my own country, by i have no problem with a non Canadian writing about Canada if the writer does the proper research. i don't feel it's wrong to write about other cultures than my own, other places than where i live. to me fiction means writing about not just what one knows, but also what one can learn about, about observing people, having emphathy with them. we are all humans. this is one world. mind you, bad writing is bad writing and it sucks that there is so much horrid fiction around about England. i get that ;)

cheers,
amanda

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I phrased myself badly - I didn't mean to imply that I was annoyed only about non-English getting it wrong, it was that it seemed to me - seeing on what I was getting presented with that it was mainly Americans. Anyone who doesn't do it right is bad (even though I get a lot of "why does it matter? It's romance?) and it's just bloody insulting.

I can just imagine the horror if I got Colloden wrong, or perhaps the Irish Rebellion in 1916. I get as angry about people getting English facts wrong - as some do about those 2 events.

[lareinenoire.livejournal.com]

Oh, that sounds absolutely terrible. I have a selfish reason for hating authors like that, as they also give a bad name to those of us who actually *do* research (in my case, apparently to the extent that I do nothing but research and never actually finish anything...) instead of just writing and hoping it all works out somehow.

While I'm willing to acknowledge that not everyone has access to, for instance, large university libraries, even that blog you linked to the other day is filled with people who do have access and who are willing to share what they find! The internet is full of marvels. There is absolutely no excuse for that sort of blatant inaccuracy.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

you make a good point. There is nothing that can't be discovered by simply sitting on ones arse and asking people.

I have found a trainspotters group on yahoo who were thrilled to bits to share information about trainsets even though they knew that I wrote m/m (one of them wittily said that he would rather be portrayed as sexy and gay rather than wearing an anorak and living with his mother.)(even though that's what he was doing)

[liriaen.livejournal.com]

I can send you my waiting-to-be-sold-on-marketplace copy of "The Borgia Bride" by a certain Kalogridis woman, if you're in need of further fuel. One doesn't even have to be Italian, Catalan, or Aragonese to blow a fuse over that one; it's an insult to humanity, wholesale. [/blergh]

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't want you to deprive you of any funds you can get for it.. I went to look at her site and was rather... stunned.

One thing I have learned by this rant and by other people's het romances, Standish is doing better than all of them!!

[liriaen.livejournal.com]

Favourite bit on her site? Hands down this valuable link, jealously guarded and only rumoured about among those in the know:

Google.com, an indispensable tool for historical researchers.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

WOW!! Thank you for sharing! *writes that gem down*

:)

[liriaen.livejournal.com]

*headdesks herself into a trauma* Was it this nugget of wisdom that told her to write that Cesare died in "Viani, Italy", and not in "Viana, Navarra"? *weeps*

[anderyn.livejournal.com]

The only recent book I was aware of with a similar title is "The Courtesan's Daughter" by Claudia Dain. It got a C- at AAR, which seems like a good call on their part if this is the same book!

But, sheesh, when I was working on my Silk Road novel (which has British characters and features a scene or two in London before moving on to Eastern climes) I bought about eleventy-seven guidebooks and Victorian etiquette books and all (and, yes, a lot of them are period-published. Not all, because I'm not made of money, alas!)

After finding out there was another book with a "harlot's daughter" title....

[anderyn.livejournal.com]

EW! I just read the excerpt of the actual novel from Amazon, and EW! EW!

That was painful.

And I only read the preface/first couple of pages. EW!

Re: After finding out there was another book with a "harlot's daughter" title....

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I know.

Isn't it?

*shudder*

[erastes.livejournal.com]

The whole name name name thing is endemic.
The Harlot's Daughter
The Butcher's Cousin
The Earl's companion
The Duke's Lover

etc etc etc

GET BACK TO WORK ON YOUR SILK ROAD NOVEL PLEASE

someone pointed out to me that 300 words a day is 9000 words a MONTH. Anyone can do that.

[angelabenedetti.livejournal.com]

Back in the... eighties I think, TLC showed a documentary series called The Silk Road, which was shot by a crew driving along the old Silk Road in jeeps and whatnot, filming the landscape and stopping at towns and villages, talking to the people who live there now. There was a lot of info about the different cultures, what things were like at the time as well as now, and they showed some really cool stuff, like a series of tunnels that run for miles and miles under the desert to carry water between rest stops. If you could get ahold of a copy of this (I think there was a video version for sale, no idea about DVDs) it'd probably be a great research source.

I think a historical about the Silk Road is a great idea, though.

Angie

[lovefromgirl.livejournal.com]

That is one of my biggest pet peeves. A "historical" author who can't be arsed to do hir research is really writing fantasy AU. Well done, and I really need to find the first rant. :-)

[erastes.livejournal.com]

It wasn't Junediamanti - I can remember who it was. Gunderpants perhaps?

And thanks! It makes me rabid!

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

how would American's for example feel if I had a Regency character getting off the boat at Ellis Island and looking up at the skyscrapers there and riding in a carriage across the Brooklyn Bridge?

Dorothy Heydt once mentioned reading a book set in modern-day California which assumed that the upper classes of that region enjoy their fox hunts, as do all upper classes. Not an alternate history, either.

But they do, sadly

[erastes.livejournal.com]

http://www.harriers.net/harriers/kingsbury/kingsbury.html

perhaps not the upper class, as that's not the same as here - but the wealthier.

This isn't the only hunt in california, I'm sure.

[asphodeline.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. A bit like watching Mel Gibson as Wallace and wondering if the writers of it actually looked at a history book first!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Yes - check out the Speak Its Name post for a comparison as to Gibson and WAllace in looks!!

[semioticwarrior.livejournal.com]

Oh crap. Although I've been running my Victorian mystery through bevies of real live English people, and researching madly, I now live in fear. ::hides face in paws::

[erastes.livejournal.com]

DO NOT FEAR

If you are trying - it will show. It's the stupid people who assume that it doesn't matter that gets me.

snorfle!!

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

But just imagine the casting nightmares on such a bad movie version of the American book you mentioned (and yes, I'm horribly sure there probably *is* one with precisely the notions you gave).
Hey, it'd be fun, imagine the results from a contest to do this thing justice simply on how you picked as the *director*!

Re: snorfle!!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I know - just dreadful isn't it?

[rwday.livejournal.com]

I don't care what country an author is from. I don't think you need to be American to write about the US or English to write about England any more than you need to be from Mars to write about Martians, but you have to do your research!

That "Harlot's Daughter" thing is just ridiculous. Why on earth didn't the author just make up some fictional king's bastard instead of butchering the life of a real person?

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I didn't mean to say that only Americans were crap - shouldn't have said that. I don't think - of course - that anyone should be of that country.

but. still

HARLOTS DAUGHTER!

[zoepaleologa.livejournal.com]

Not me, so far as I can remember, but yes, it irritates me enormously. Speaking as someone researching the history of a country of which I am NOT a citizen, even though it is unlikely the product will be read or known in that country, I tend to proceed as if it will be (I keep in my head assorted Russian academics as imaginary readers who are ready to tear me a new one if I fuck up).

Who was Joan of Windsor? Sounds like a mediaeval illegit of the time of c. Edward I (or maybe he had a daughter called Joan - no, that was Joan of Acre who married Gilbert de Clare... /waffles on).

I want my historical fiction to be as accurate as the writer can make it. If I can pick my way through heaps of tendentious muck raking, so can published authors.

BTW the article on Ivan/Fedor is well in hand, except it's been held up by promotion prospects AND the discovery of some astounding new facts this week. Yay for new facts! even if the confirmation of Fedor's widdle bruv existing and Fedor governing the town of Kaluga means yet another effing re-write.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I apologise for using your name in vain. Maybe Gunderpants? I don't know - whoever it was got really pissed off about it.

I'd never heard of Joan of Windsor - but Gehayi pointed me to the blub - she was the older daughter of Alice de Perrer - mistress of Edward III
http://www.gatago.org/soc/genealogy/medieval/56498348.html
http://www.middle-ages.org.uk/alice-perrers.htm

A very fascinating story - but bloody hell - why destroy her real life?