Last month, I came across an Avon Books ad in a bookish publication. It was a call for romance manuscripts.
From now until September 15, 2019, we are accepting manuscripts of all subgenres of Adult romance fiction – HEA (happily ever after) or HFN (happy for now) required!
I took this as a call to arms–the arms of Love, that is. Of course romance is an old frenemy. Surely I could scribble one of these between episodes of Poldark. I don’t read the genre, but I can research the hell out of anything.
The problem: I don’t enjoy modern romance novels. I prefer the Gothic novels of the ’50s and ’60s whose covers portray women in miniskirts or negligees fleeing along cliffs from dark mansions. Why not start with Mary Stewart, the master, I asked. And so I reread her 1959 novel, My Brother Michael, which I’d been meaning to do anyway, because, if I’m not mistaken, there is a playful allusion to it in Grant Ginder’s new novel, Honestly, I Meant Well (which I wrote about here).
I have a soft spot for Stewart’s heroine Camilla Haven, a Latin teacher on vacation in Greece. She has just broken up with her fiancé, and, worse, her friend Elizabeth, who was to travel with her, broke her leg right before their trip. It is fair to say that Camilla is feeling low as she sits alone in a cafe in Athens. “Nothing ever happens to me,” she writes.
Then a stranger approaches her, mistaking her for someone called “Simon’s Girl.” This other woman had rented a car to Delphi and said it was a matter of life and death. Camilla decides to take the car: she had wanted an adventure, and now she’s found one. And she thinks it’s her duty to find this Simon.
The only Simon in Delphi turns out to be an Englishman who teaches Greek. (Now there’s a match made in heaven!) But he did not order a car. He has come to honor his brother Michael, who was murdered during the war. Soon they are embroiled in a mystery involving betrayal, art, stolen treasure, and, in a way, the gods of Delphi.
I have tragically realized that I can’t write like Mary Stewart, whose landscape descriptions are breathtaking, but I have devised my plot. I have borrowed the names and professions of Stewart’s Camilla and Simon for inspiration.
Camilla, a Latin teacher who lives in Baltimore, has just won a Teacher of the Year Award. She is partly exultant and partly ironic—but mostly thrilled. Her boyfriend Philip receives the news in silence and then announces he is moving out. Will she spend the summer writing in her diary and watching Meg Ryan movies?
Fortunately, she is offered a free vacation on the gorgeous Maryland shore in exchange for running her friend Elizabeth’s used bookstore. Camilla is has settled in, and is sitting in a cozy leather chair with a glass of wine and a copy of Horace when Simon, an unshaven Greek teacher who has backpacked from God knows where, bursts in. It turns out Elizabeth had also asked him to take over the bookstore for a few weeks…and he had mixed up the dates with Camilla’s.
Am I actually writing this? Well…I haven’t started.
But I am reading another novel by Mary Stewart. She is very good!
I’m also a fan of Mary Stewart. I read a lot of her books when I was a teenager, but I’ve been re-reading many of them recently. I still enjoy them and, like you, admire her talent for description.
She’s so smart! Her characters quote Greek tragedy and Shakespeare. Not everybody could pull that off, but I absolutely believe in Camilla and Simon.
On Fri, Aug 16, 2019 at 7:56 AM Thornfield Hall: A Book Blog wrote:
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Ha ha, this reminded of my early teenage (and maybe pre-teen) reading, too.I remembered enjoying Mary Stewart’s Nine Coaches Waiting (probably because of embittered but very handsome nobleman Raoul de Valmy -it also had a Gothic mansion, an evil villian and a young ingenue) so much that I had to hunt down the ebook years later.The Hearth and Eagle by Anya Seton was another. This lovely post put these books in perspective for me, finally. 🙂
Oh, I must add Nine Coaches Waiting to my TB!. I have read most of them, but this one doesn’t ring a bell. Stewart is great, a really excellent writer who went on to write historical novels, though I prefer her Gothics, and I love her epigraphs from Shakespeare and Greek tragedians. We do have to laugh a little at these books, though. What a fantasy for all us women who do not happen on our vacations to happen upon international crime rings and help bust them! I have read a couple of Anya Seton’s books and she is also excellent. It’s the “genre” that keeps these women in the pop category.
When I read about the adventures of Camilla in Delphi, I have to echo her: “Nothing ever happens to me.” Thank God! 🙂