Travels with Diana: From Lady of the Garrison to Late-Night Sex Fiend

I can’t imagine why, but many people assume that “book-touring” is a glamorous occupation. Well…it’s better than digging ditches, or nailing up roof-trusses in 114-degree heat, I’ll say that for it. [g] I do get to stay in Very Nice hotels (even if I generally don’t get to actually occupy a room for more than six hours or so), I do-by the generosity of the publishers-usually get to fly Business Class (being trapped in a 24” space for several hours is indeed better than being trapped in an 18” space, and you do get to stand in shorter lines in order to be degraded at airports, and yes, they do come round and baste you liberally with alcohol, in hopes that you will forget you’re on an airplane), and I do enjoy meeting all the nice people who are kind enough to come out and see me (and I am always pleased-if occasionally somewhat taken aback--to admire interesting body art based on my book covers-thinking here of the sweet lady who had the running-stag brooch from the cover of The Fiery Cross tattooed on her foot, of all painful things…).

By and large, book-tours consist of 1) media interviews, and 2) public readings and book-signings. Now and then, though, we hit something special. There was the German photographer who made me climb trees in the public gardens in Munich (causing passersby to politely avert their eyes, obviously thinking me some kind of nut-if not an absolute squirrel), Paolo, the remarkable Italian interpreter, who could actually do that simultaneous translating that they do at the UN (we crouched together in the business center in the bowels of the Principe di Savoia hotel in Milano-which has more marble than anyplace I’ve seen outside the Sistine Chapel--with a phone, from which he’d tell me (in English) what the person on the other end had asked, and then start relaying my answer to them (in Italian) as I spoke, without needing to wait until I finished talking-amazing!, the very sweet homeless Greek-Japanese woman with whom I had an interesting (if very bizarre) half-hour conversation in front of the police station in Barcelona (no, I never did figure out how she ended up in Barcelona; she slept in a doorway across from the police station in order to avoid being robbed), the architecture of Antoni Gaudi (who is one of the biggest nuts I’ve ever met, in an artistic sense; he was building things in the very early 1900’s, but would have felt right at home in Disneyland-Google him and you’ll see what I mean), and the German friends who took me on a thousand-kilometer hike along the Rhine, hijacked a public bus, and ended up at a vineyard at the foot of the Drachenfels (where Siegfried slew the dragon; it means “Dragon’s Head”), and then inveigled me into drinking the local Federweiss (“feather-white,” it means. It’s uncasked green wine, and is served in tall glasses like grapefruit juice, which it strongly resembles. It, um, is not grapefruit juice.). I nearly died of alcohol poisoning, and if you notice a certain reference to Federweiss in Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade, you’ll know where it came from.

One of the more memorable public events I was involved in, though, was the evening last fall in Quebec City, when I became a Lady of the Garrison. The Garrison in question is that of the 78th Fraser Highlanders-a regiment originally raised by one Simon Fraser (aka “The Young Fox”) as part of his attempt to recover the family fortunes after the debacle of the ‘45, when his father (“The Old Fox”) was beheaded and the family estates confiscated by the Crown. (You will have met the two Simons before, in Dragonfly in Amber. They’re both real.) The 78th got around; they were very active in the French and Indian War (aka the Seven Years War), and while the regiment itself was disbanded in 1763, there are a number of extant “garrisons” of the 78th-societies which maintain the history, customs, and honor of the original (as well as a very famous pipe-band). So I was myself much honored to be invited to come and do an evening event for the Garrison, while I was in Quebec City book-touring for Un Tourbillon de Neige et Cendres (aka the French edition of A Breath of Snow and Ashes).

The 78th Garrison maintains a charming library and offices in what used to be the city jail-some of the original cells are still there on the first floor, thoroughly dank and grim (my hosts invited me to tour them, in case I might meet any interesting ghosts). The library is upstairs, though, and I was received outside by a delegation of kilted gentlemen, and duly piped up to the library. I gave a talk to the assembled crowd, after which I was sworn in and commissioned as a “Lady of the Garrison.”

I gather this appointment gives me the right to cook and do laundry for the regiment, but was very flattering nonetheless. Pierre MacKenzie, one of the gentlemen of the Garrison, has kindly provided a slideshow of the evening-the pictures shown here were provided by Mr. MacKenzie and used with his permission.

Oh, all right, you’re waiting to hear about the sex-fiend business. Well, that-like so many of my professional activities-was an accident. See, I was invited to attend this year’s Historical Novelists Society conference, which took place in Albany, NY (and a good time was had by all; if you want to see it, here’s a nice slideshow, though the diligent photographers unfortunately missed the poor lady who fell into the swimming pool during the book-signing…). I did several talks, workshops, etc.-including one panel titled “How Much is TOO Much? Writing Sex-scenes in Historical Fiction.”

Well, riveting topic, obviously, and we had a delightful lineup of participants, all of whom duly conferred by email ahead of time, in order to decide exactly how we were going to run this. Not that I wish to pass myself off as any sort of expert in this particular topic [cough]--but I have actually done workshops and seminars on how to write sex-scenes on various occasions, and I happen to know that it’s a topic that’s not easy to discuss in the abstract, as it were. You sort of need to have illustrative material.

That being so, the original notion was that each of the panelists would read a brief excerpt of his or her own work. However, there were five panelists (originally; one unfortunately couldn’t attend), and the inescapable truth is that it takes at least 2-3 minutes to read one page-and taking a small sample of a sex-scene is not really either fair to the work, or enlightening to the audience, since you can’t tell what the overall purpose of the scene is under those circumstances (yes, actually, sex-scenes do have other purposes-one of the points of this particular demonstration). So we reluctantly decided that we wouldn’t be able to read, after all, because if we did, there wouldn’t be time for either adequate discussion, or questions (and the questions are usually the most entertaining part of a panel like this, I assure you). Well, so, then I had a brain-wave: why not, I said, hold an impromptu late-night reading after the banquet and festivities on Saturday night (the panel was meant to be on Sunday morning), at which those panelists who felt so inclined could read selected bits? Anybody who wanted to could listen to this material, and then we could refer to it during the panel discussion on Sunday.

This suggestion being unanimously adopted, we showed up more or less ready to roll. Mind, it really was “late-night,” because the Saturday evening festivities featured a lot of excellent entertainment, ranging from singing to ethnic story-telling to belly-dancing. I nipped out to change clothes after the belly-dancing (no, no, no, I wasn’t doing the belly-dancing! I gave the keynote speech at dinner), and on the way back, encountered Jade Lee, one of the sex-scene panelists, in a state of high anxiety, flipping pages in her latest book.

“I’m too embarrassed to read an actual sex-scene,” she said, clutching the book to her bosom. “So I’m just going to read a scene where the hero’s doing acupuncture on himself.”

“Sounds good to me,” I assured her, and went to check on the mental well-being of the rest of the panel. Chris Humphreys, being a professional actor (as well as an excellent author of historical fiction; he writes as C.C. Humphreys), has no shame about reading anything in public-when I told him what Jade had said, he inquired whether “performing acupuncture on himself” was a euphemism?-and Lisa Jensen, while a trifle nervous, was game to go. As for me…well, as I said, I’ve done this before.

All I can say is, it went with a roar (no, “acupuncture” really wasn’t a euphemism for you-know-what, but the hero of Ms. Lee’s scene was inserting the acupuncture needles into his you-know-what (why? I have no idea. We didn’t get as far as technical explanations)). I don’t think I’ve ever received a standing ovation for a reading before-but then, there was an open bar both before and after dinner, which was pretty heavily patronized during the belly-dancing.

I unfortunately can’t give you the whole experience, as I can’t reprint Lisa’s, Jade’s, and Chris’s scenes (Chris’s involved a very funny and prolonged act of …[ahem] non-procreative sex act beginning with “c”….with brandied peaches, if that helps-it’s in his book, The Blooding of Jack Absolute)-but for those who are interested, the following are links to the particular bits that I read during this infamous performance (the point being, of course, to demonstrate just how many different things you can do with a sex-scene-other than the obvious).

Voyager excerpt

Red Ant excerpt

ABOSA excerpt

Now, you may notice, reading through these, that in fact, the participants are actually having sex only in the third one-and the tone is far from erotic there. And they’re not even touching or speaking in the second one. Even so, I think you’ll observe that all three of these bits-diverse in mood, emotional content, and physical detail as they are-really are “sex-scenes”-if perhaps not the usual thing one imagines with regard to that term.

See, a sex-scene-ideally, at least-is really about the exchange of emotion, not bodily fluids. It’s a specialized sort of a dialogue scene, with small physical cues-but the physical action is really not the point; it’s what’s happening between the people involved. Ergo, a sex-scene can be used for just about any novelistic purpose, and is particularly effective, no matter what its purpose--because human beings are genetically hard-wired to be interested in sex. People will pay attention to anything involving sex, whether they want to or not. It’s your business as a writer to make sure they don’t regret it. And thus endeth today’s lesson. [g]