Because I’m so sure that people are endlessly fascinated in the minutia of my process, I thought it might be fun to do a little “Writer’s Commentary” series of posts on some of the behind-the-scenes nonsense that went into creating The Devil’s Luck. Some of it involves interesting (ok, to me maybe) information I learned in the course of my historical research, resources I used to make the story feel more accurate, plot judgement calls, and even logistical problems.
Here we go!
1. All the character’s first names are legit for the time period.
When I went to choose names for the characters in The Devil’s Luck, I wanted them to sound like names people in 18th century Great Britain actually would have had. I wasn’t able find a list for the 18th century, but I was able to find one for the 17th, with the top 50 most common names per decade for the first three decades of that century. Name trends then didn’t change nearly so quickly as they do now, so I felt safe using this list of names for my pool of choices. Hannah is the 19th most popular female name on the list for 1620 – 1629. Edmund is 16th in popularity on the male list, and Benjamin, 30th. Every first name in the story came from this list, except for Brigit (who’s Irish, and this list was tabulated from English names) and Hezekiah (a former slave).
2. There wasn’t always a Brigit.
That’s right. Originally I had our dear Hannah travelling alone, but my excellent beta-reader pointed out to me that at this point in history, women of any sort of reputation went absolutely nowhere alone, and I was convinced to supply our heroine with at least a maid, hired by her father for propriety’s sake. And thank goodness, too, or we never would have had the pleasure of writing the fun scene where Brigit and the cook, Mr. Bone, have a saucy interaction and tease Hannah a bit down in the galley. And there wouldn’t be Brigit & Bone’s spin-off tale, which I’m in the middle of writing right now!
3. Chapter One of TDL was originally rejected by Literotica
Literotica has rules about story sub
missions, and one of those rules is that all descriptions of sexual activity must be between characters who are over 18 years of age. The problem is, the human beings who approve the submissions over there don’t have time to fully read each one, so certain words and phrases flag a rejection. The first time we meet the notorious Rowland Graves, he bribes a couple of boys at the port to do some spying and miscellaneous grunt work for him. It seems some of the wording in that scene set off the red flags:
missions, and one of those rules is that all descriptions of sexual activity must be between characters who are over 18 years of age. The problem is, the human beings who approve the submissions over there don’t have time to fully read each one, so certain words and phrases flag a rejection. The first time we meet the notorious Rowland Graves, he bribes a couple of boys at the port to do some spying and miscellaneous grunt work for him. It seems some of the wording in that scene set off the red flags:“You there! Boy!” he hissed at a passing lad, probably no older than eight or nine years. The boy turned a sceptical eye toward him.“How’d you like to earn a bit of coin?”
and this one:
Once he’d learnt enough, he asked the boy a final question before relinquishing the promised coin. “Have you any friends or brothers, any boys a bit older than yourself? Say twelve or thirteen?”
Obviously these boys were’t part of any of the story’s adult scenes, and now I’ve learned to include a note with my Lit submissions that all characters involved in adult stuff are of legal age.
4. Ship-shape and Bristol Fashion
When I decided I wanted to start out the story with Hannah in Bristol (after the prologue in Jamaica), I had my work cut out for me researching what it was like for ships to navigate in and out of the port in the early 18th century. What I learned was that the Avon (the river that leads inland to Bristol Port) has a water level that varies a great deal with the tides. It varies so much that, prior to the early 19th century, when locks were built to create a “floating harbor” that would allow a consistent water level to be maintained for the ships, when the tide went out, any ships still stuck in the harbor would be grounded in the mud of the river bed until the tide came back in. Due to this tidal problem and, “because of their keels, [the ships] would fall to one side. If everything was not stowed away tidily, or tied down, the results were chaotic and cargo could be spoiled.” Thus any ships coming through this port were best off keeping tight control over their cargo, and leaving us with the glorious expression that they ought to be “ship-shape and Bristol fashion.”
You can see Graves make reference to it here:
Crowding the women through the cabin’s entrance, Graves left them no time to quibble about the room. “We aim to make it out on this tide,” he told the pair, “before we’re run aground on the bed of the bloody Avon.
5. Mrs Collingwood or Hannah?
I had so much to learn when I set out to write this story, and one of those things that cost me a silly amount of research was forms of address for the time period. Turns out that “First names were almost never used in speech, except in extremely limited circumstances, before this century.” My first draft of chapter one didn’t include this, but after some questions raised by my beta-reader caused me to do some additional research, I discovered a number of things. First, most people, especially respectable people, called each other by their title and last name: Mrs Collingwood, Mr Till, etc. Even people as familiar as spouses did this, at least in front of other people. Or they would simply refer to each other by their relation. For example, a wife might say, “Do you wish to retire early this evening, Husband?” It seems odd now, but this was perfectly normal for the time. And so in the story, I show it as a big deal when Blackburn refers to Hannah by her first name, or the first time she calls him Edmund and not Captain Blackburn.
Another thing I discovered was at this point in time, all adult women were referred to as “Mrs”, regardless of their marital status. “Miss” as it’s used today, for single women and girls, was only used at this time for…ahem…women of ill-repute.
6. Women were going commando.
Yup. In the 18th century, women weren’t even up to bloomers yet, much less underwear. Beneath the many layers of a woman’s outfit, including bodice, stays, skirts, apron, and petticoats, was the shift. The shift by itself would look like a long night shirt, and was the basic foundational garment at the time. Nothing was worn under the shift. And since it was such an ordeal for a woman to get in and out of her complicated clothing at the time, you’ll find most sex scenes in TDL involving skirts simply being lifted, rather than any complete stripping, which would have truly removed any element of spontaneity from the scenes. If you read historical romances or erotica set in really any time period before the 1920s, and hear about dresses being ripped off in one fell swoop, or in any way easily pulled off over a person’s head, you are definitely not hearing how things really worked at that time.
That’s it for now! Didn’t want to make this post too long – you know how the internet is: TL;DR. Heheh. Let me know in the comments if you’re interested in hearing any more of these little tidbits beyond what I gleaned after a quick review of chapter one. See you next time!
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