The Versailles Glide: I've been promising for weeks that I'd write about the way ladies of the French court were talk to walk. This is how Marie-Antoinette was instructed by her dancing teacher:
It is necessary to walk gracefully in high-heeled slippers and the heavy robe à la française, with its wide skirts and long train. You must not walk heel to toe, as one does normally, but with many tiny steps made quickly while balancing forward on one's toes, so that one gives the impression of skimming just above the surface of the ground without touching it, as though one weighs no more than a cloud.
Got that?
This has not been a summer of skimming above the surface of the ground. More like crawling through mud. I had no sooner finished a first draft of THE WILD QUEEN and sent it off than the copyedited manuscript of CLEOPATRA CONFESSES arrived by UPS with about a million little changes and corrections. Most of them I approved, but on a few I just had to stand and FIGHT! We'll see what happens now.
For those of you who asked, CLEOPATRA CONFESSES will be published next summer, 2011. THE WILD QUEEN: MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS will come out a few months later, fall 2011.
Now I'm going to sit and think about what comes next.
It is necessary to walk gracefully in high-heeled slippers and the heavy robe à la française, with its wide skirts and long train. You must not walk heel to toe, as one does normally, but with many tiny steps made quickly while balancing forward on one's toes, so that one gives the impression of skimming just above the surface of the ground without touching it, as though one weighs no more than a cloud.
Got that?
This has not been a summer of skimming above the surface of the ground. More like crawling through mud. I had no sooner finished a first draft of THE WILD QUEEN and sent it off than the copyedited manuscript of CLEOPATRA CONFESSES arrived by UPS with about a million little changes and corrections. Most of them I approved, but on a few I just had to stand and FIGHT! We'll see what happens now.
For those of you who asked, CLEOPATRA CONFESSES will be published next summer, 2011. THE WILD QUEEN: MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS will come out a few months later, fall 2011.
Now I'm going to sit and think about what comes next.