My latest guest in the series of interviews celebrating the release of the latest anthology from Manifold Press, is Mel Logue, author of Firebrand. Rainbow Bouquet is available now from the usual vendors [links below]
Welcome, Mel.
For how long have you been writing?
Hm. About forty years, this year! I started writing “stories” – possibly because my own childhood was rather dull and grim, being the daughter of two alcoholics – back in the days when primary school children were expected to present a narrative of the things they did in their happy normal homes. Mine almost invariably revolved around going to the pub (which was true) with two fictional horses called Napoleon and Josephine, who did much more amazing things than I did.
And I haven’t really stopped making stuff up since!
What attracted you to the brief for Rainbow Bouquet?
Red Horse: Book 1 of the Uncivil War series
So basically, my first series of novels (hark at me, my first series!) is set in the 1640s and it’s the continuing adventures of a troop of Parliamentarian cavalry during the British Civil Wars. Now as it falls out one of the main characters throughout the middle of the series is genderqueer; she’s a soldier, and a brutal and efficient one – she just happens to pee sitting down and, occasionally, have sex with either men or women depending how she feels at the time. So that’s always a clear and present dynamic in those books. The idea of women who dressed and fought as men was enough of a thing that Charles I got quite cross about it and denounced it publicly, but it wasn’t really right to explore that character any more fully in what are essentially adventure stories. On the other hand, it resonated with me, and when I saw the brief I thought it was an opportunity for me to think more about gender fluidity and independence and sexuality in the period, and how entwined they were.
What inspired your story?
Aphra Behn, pretty much! A year or so ago I’d started writing about an actress called Galatea Farrinor, who’s a Restoration actress existing in the same sort of physical and moral limbo inhabited by Affie Behn: a strong, independent woman making her own way in what’s essentially a male-dominated world.
Aphra Behn by Peter Lely, c 1670
Initially Gally just had a short story, but I can’t help thinking that it didn’t stop there, with those two. I’m not sure how it goes on – it isn’t, I don’t think, an ongoing will-they won’t-they romance, I think they’re both far too sensible for that – but having burnt their bridges with convention, the world is pretty much their oyster. Possibly a mystery. Definitely an adventure,
Please tell me about your current work in progress.
I have three ongoing currently – plus a number of short stories, I like to dip in and out!
The third book in the Thomazine & Major Russell series published by Sapere Books, which is the sort of Happy Ever After of one of the characters from the 1640s series. If your idea of a HEA involves being shot at, intrigued at, half-drowned and knocked on the head by ne’er-do-wells, then the Russells’ marriage is a veritable fairytale. On the other hand, it’s enormously fun to write – someone grumpily said “but if the series is named after the two of them, you know they both survive, and where’s the tension in that?” To which I can only say, chum, you’ve never been married, have you…. The first is out now and is called An Abiding Fire. The second will be out soon – I’ve seen the cover and it’s lovely – but I don’t know when, and it’s called A Deceitful Subtlety, and that’s the one where the Russells tangle with Aphra. In more than one sense. You’ll have to read it….
The seventh (!!!!!) Uncivil Wars book, the bald outline of which is – the aftermath of the battle of Marston Moor, the siege of Helmsley Castle in Yorkshire, and the creation of the New Model Army.
And a timeslip romantic comedy involving a widowed archivist, a stately home in Cornwall hat needs to be saved from developers, and a troop of temporally-displaced cavalry. This started as an in-joke between friends, a sort of 1640s Outlander spoof, and took on a life of its own….
Could we see an excerpt?
This is from the timeslip romance, which is provisionally entitled The White Devil – it’s an Elizabethan proverb the white devil is worse than the black, meaning self-righteousness is worse than just plain badness. And believe you me, there is no one more self-righteous than Penitence Corder at the beginning of the book… So this is Pen, trying to play the forbidding officer in charge, having just walked into 2019 by accident.
He stalked from her presence with what he hoped was a suitably commanding demeanour, back out into the hall, and into his own quarters.
And then sat down on his own, rackety, held-together-with-rag-and-a-prayer stool, which gave its customary warning of impending collapse, and even that was reassuring – bending down and thumping the loose leg back into place with the heel of your hand, because at least it was real and solid and you knew where you were with a stool that was not intended for someone of your height –
Pen gulped, and tasted acid. And was not going to puke on his own correspondence in fear of a woman. Was not.
(Was going to lean out of the window and do it in the bushes outside instead, and then lie shivering over the sill with his hair tangled up in the lavender until he felt something like ordinary. Listening to his own company squabbling and thumping in the house, and his own remounts cropping the grass, the swish and thump of horses at peace picketed together -)
He had heard none of that in her now. Her now had smelt different, sounded different – it had felt different –
He slid off the windowsill and sat on the floor with a thump, head on his knees.
What if she had been telling the truth?
– oh, that scared him –
What if there were two nows going on at the same time,and he had walked into hers all unknowing?
Pen, Esther said in his head, I might have known thee could do nothing so ordinary as court a nice girl from Bristol.
That’s not funny. And anyway, she’s not – I’m not courting her, not like –
Surely. Thee was always sick when we were courting, too. It was the excitement. I marked it a hundred times. I only married thee in pity, for fear thee would waste away to a nothing an I did not.Thee is courting, Penitence Corder, even if thee will not own it. And about time too, I should say, for thee needs a woman like –
“A hole in the head,” he said aloud, and the door jerked open a crack.
“You all right, sir?”
All he needed. His dead wife, on the one side, offering helpful hints on a nonexistent courtship, and bloody Mayhem eavesdropping on the other. “I. Am. Fine,” he snarled, and Mayhem sniffed.
“Sitting in the dark banging about and talking to yourself is not your normal presentation, sir. If you don’t mind me saying.”
It was not so much the idea of another now, or her in it, or even him in it. “The Lord moves in mysterious ways,” Pen said, and Mayhem shoved the door right open and said, “Who are you talking to in here, then?”
“I was – contemplating,” he said with dignity.
“You’re sitting on the floor.”
“The stool finally surrendered.”
“Looks all right to me… sir. You’ve not finally… you know?”
“Lost my wits altogether? Probably, lieutenant. I spend too much time with you.”
“I have never sat on the floor talking to myself, sir.”
“No, Mayhem, indeed you have not. This is possibly because if you were left alone in a darkened room you would dig your way through the floorboards to feminine company, if necessary. You have never been required to talk to yourself. You can’t be on your own for long enough.”
Where may we follow you online?
Twitter I am – predictably – @hollie_babbitt
My website is http://www.asweetdisorder.com – as is my Instagram!
FB page is http://www.facebook.com/MJLogue-1653750564845159/
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Stories of love in the past, present and future…
I haven’t actually had time to read this one yet, but I have a copy and am looking forward to it enormously.
Elin Gregory 