Mellisande Devereaux

Good evening, my dear readers! Mellisande Devereaux here once again, addressing you as I attempt to distract myself from lingering worry about the full moon this evening. There has been so much trouble of late that I find myself hard-pressed to write much at all that genuinely functions with a proper plot and such. I do however need a bit of distraction, and thus I feel I must again speak to my fellow authors of romances.

Heroines I Am Tired of Reading About
1. The governess who falls in love with the lord of the manor and spends a hundred and fifty pages of angst and woe on how he could ever love her when she is so woefully common.
2. The incredibly innocent debutante without a thought in her head beyond getting married.
3. The termagent who needs to be "tamed" by a strang man.
4. The ruined lady who needs a rich man to save her.
5. The wealthy lady who is shocked to find that the man she married was after her money and refuses to believe that he has indeed fallen in love with her.
6. The ugly wallflower who really just needs her hair done to be heart-stoppingly beautiful.
7. The Muggleborn lady in love with the Pureblood man, or the Pureblood lady in love with the Muggleborn man.

It's one thing if you include some sort of interesting twist. There are ways to make these heroines interesting. But please, stop just recycling the same women over and over again.

And while I'm criticizing, here are some specific haroine traits which, while acceptable in moderation, are frequently abused:
1. Unusually coloured eyes.
2. Incredibly magnificent hair
3. Immense musical talent
4. Being impossibly kind
5. Being universally beloved.
6. Being largely despised and yet somehow respected.
7. Extraordinary magical powers such as being a metamorphmagus, being an incredibly accurate Seer, or havinga telepathic connection with animals.

Hello, Dear Readers!

Shut it. Of course I know not all of you read my books. I'm not talking to you.

Tomorrow evening, I'll be at Flourish & Blotts Bookshop for a question-and-answer session and book signing! I'll be talking mostly about the newly released Light of Winter, the currently-in-the-works Spring Flowers, but please feel free to bring your questions about and copies of any of my past works as well! I love talking about my work, and my dear Henry does get bored with it after a bit.

And speaking of my work, I have a new list of phrases I would like to see my fellow authors reduce their use of:

Please stop saying:
limpid pools
orbs (when referring to eyes)
snowy white cravat (find a new metaphor, please)
Quidditch-toned muscles (there simply has to be another way to get the idea across)
creamy thighs (again, new metaphor please)
delicate arch of her eyebrow
heaving bosom
creamy swell of her bosom

And while we're at it, someone needs to write a heroine with big feet. Romantic heroine feet are forever being described as dainty. A heroine can be beautiful without having perfect Cinderella toes. Maybe I'll use that for the next series.

Greetings, ladies and gentlemen, from Mellisande Devereaux. At the suggestion of my publisher, I have decided to use this journal as a place to discuss my work on the next novel in the Seasons of Love series, as well as the general process of writing romances.

To begin, I had thought I was start an involved discussion of how I create a hero. However, I have had a dismal day. The shop girl at the market was rude, I slept too late and have thus been thrown off-kilter all afternoon, and the cat killed a squirrel and brought it to me while I was lounging in the back garden. He clearly expected that I should eat it, or at least play with it a bit as a courtesy.

Therefore, I have elected to tackle a smaller issue instead: euphemisms.

Now, the stories I write are intended to focus upon the romance more so than the sex. Nonetheless, the sex is clearly a vital part of the story. It's a culmination of chemistry, a point of deep connection between two people. Therefore, these scenes are very important, and must be written carefully. One wishes to be sensual, not vulgar. However, I must complain that some of my fellow authors are going just a little too far in their attempts to avoid vulgarity. Therefore, for the benefit of my fellow authors, I offer a list of words and phrases which I do not ever wish to see in a sexual context ever again:

- turgid
- sword
- member
- spear
- weeping
- dripping
- oozing (oozing! Why on earth would you think that was a good idea?)
- mound
- flower
- petals
- tunnel

I'm sure there are more, but I think I'll pour a glass of wine now.

OOC NOTE: This is the journal for dyedinthewool's romance novelist alter ego, Mellisande Devereaux. Calypso Bones's publisher purchased the journal under the pen name for the purpose of promoting and discussing the books while keeping Cally's privacy intact.

As for what people know about Mellisande Devereaux:
- The default icon here is the picture on the book jacket.
- She only does print interviews, and never makes public appearances.
- And here's what's written in her Author Biography in the back cover of the book:

Mellisande Devereaux is the author of 10 novels, which have been translated into nearly every language in the world. She lives in the Cotswolds with her husband Henry, and the three cats who have mostly replaced her children in her affections since the latter grew up and stopped being cute. Her grandchildren, however, replace the cats as soon as they appear in her sight.

Her books are the following:
All of the Mellisande Devereaux novels are set in the wizarding world. While everyone knows that Mellisande Devereaux is a pen name, very few people are aware that the pen name belongs to Calypso Bones. All of the books after the first three have spent at least a little time on the Daily Prophet's Bestseller List, and while they won't be winning any literary awards, they are very, very popular. It is also important to note that these are not BAD romance novels. As romance novels go, they're really quite good - Mellisande tries to avoid the worst cliches and to make heros and heroines who are interesting and believable rather than perfect paragons.

The first four are historical romances set in the Regency period. They center around a group of wizarding society types who are loosely linked in various ways.

1. A Gentleman's Agreement (1965), featuring society darling Robert Rathmore and rebellious debutante Eleanor Gladstone.
2. A Lady's Prerogative (1966), featuring Robert's devil-may-care rake of a brother, Lucien Rathmore, and lady-turned-governess-through-false-ruination Olivia Middleton
3. A Charming Prospect (1968), featuring Olivia's BFF Brandi and Charms professor William Wandsworth
4. Trouble Brewing (1970), featuring renowned apothecary Ian Stewart and Lady with a Shady Past Khushi

The next four are a medieval series based around four artifacts of King Arthur's time that have been passed down to their descendants. These are heavier on adventure and mystery than the first four (though still centered around the romance)
5. Merlin's Wand (1972), with the brave knight Carolus and his feisty lady Mariana
6. Arthur's Shield (1973), with Lord Magnus of Hawksfell and the sweet and beautiful Lady Isla who teaches him not to be so cold and unfeeling
7. Gawain's Sword (1975), with Magnus's deeply traumatized by horrible curse scars brother Maximus and the lady healer who saves him from his dark past, Una
8. Lancelot's Ring (1976), with the intellectual David who saves Briana from an arranged marriage with an evil old man.

And the last two are the beginnings of her new Seasons series, which are based on a group of four young women who were all BFF at Hogwarts. The first two, with Gryffindor Alison and Hufflepuff Dawn have already been written. The stories of Slytherin Emily and Ravenclaw Ella are yet to come.

9. Changes in Autumn (1978), featuring Alison and Lord Douglas Marchbank in a hot Gryffindor/Slytherin romance
10. Light of Winter (1979), featuring Dawn and her efforts to forget about the ever-so-handsome Michael Winston and how he shattered her heart...but he's looking for a second chance.