Alive & Knitting

UPDATE, UPDATE – Rosamunde gets her story! See this new post.

And another update – as of August 2010, Rosamunde’s story is available on Amazon in a Kindle edition.

I received a lovely note from Tina the other day, asking about the fate of Rosamunde at the end of the Jewels of Kinfairlie series. This secondary character was left with her story unresolved. Tina’s note reminded me that there had been a post about this on my old (red) website, but that the info hadn’t made it to the revised (purple) site.

And it seemed to me that it might be an interesting story to those of you, both in terms of what happened to Rosamunde in my fictional realm of Kinfairlie, and also what happened to Rosamunde’s story in the very real world of publishing.

So, first, the fictional world.

The Saga of Rosamunde requires a SPOILER ALERT! If you have not yet read all three books in the Jewels of Kinfairlie trilogy and you intend to do so and you don’t want the story spoiled for you, then stop reading now. Bookmark this entry and come back later.

Rosamunde made her first appearance in THE SCOUNDREL as a baby thrust upon an unwilling Gawain. She then appeared as an adult at the end of THE WARRIOR – attending the Hawk’s wedding – where it was revealed that she alone had taken up the Lammergeier family trade in relics. There also was a good bit of sexual energy between Rosamunde and Tynan, Ysabella and Merlyn’s son, but the pair believed that they were blood cousins (because everyone believed that Rosamunde really was a bastard of Gawain’s.)

I was pretty interested in Rosamunde then, always having had a fondness for women who defy convention. Here’s where a couple of publishing world things happened:

1/ There was a scene at the end of THE WARRIOR which took place at the Hawk’s wedding feast. Evangeline, who had raised Rosamunde as her own, saw the attraction between Tynan and Rosamunde and decided to reveal to everyone that the two were not cousins. She told the assembled family that Rosamunde was not Gawain’s child, to the astonishment of all in attendance. My editor cut this scene, because she said it wasn’t relevant. That’s why readers don’t know how the pair found out that they weren’t related.

2/ Next, my plan was to write Rosamunde’s story, tentatively titled THE PIRATE QUEEN, as a link between the Ravensmuir trilogy and the Jewels of Kinfairlie trilogy. But my editor wanted to go straight to the Jewel trilogy and suggested that I weave Rosamunde’s story in as a subplot. I thought at the time that this would work.

Back to the fictional world. By the beginning of THE BEAUTY BRIDE, Tynan and Rosamunde had been intimate for a while. Their relationship was consummated, long-standing, and devoid of formal commitment. I realized that this would suit Rosamunde quite well, but Tynan, being conservative, would be feeling a bit guilty about the unconventionality of it all. He cared about public perceptions as much as Rosamunde didn’t. The problem came to the surface when Tynan spoke his mind in THE BEAUTY BRIDE. Phew! That was when I realized that no matter how much attraction was between Rosamunde and Tynan, they were too different for their match to last for the duration. Tynan, who was the impoverished child in THE ROGUE, would never be able to take his wealth for granted or to turn his back upon his responsibilities. And Rosamunde, who had always been blessed with both abundance and good luck, would never be able to understand his need to protect Ravensmuir. A wanderer, confident in herself, she would never understand his attachment to a piece of property.

Frankly, after Tynan told her off, I thought Rosamunde deserved better.

She wasn’t convinced, though. So I still hoped for the best, but even I couldn’t save Tynan when he turned back for the ring in THE ROSE RED BRIDE. He chose Ravensmuir over Rosamunde one time too many.

And he died in the ensuing avalanche.

Rosamunde, though, is still a special character to me, so I was relieved when she escaped the avalanche. The golden light she ran for came from a portal to the realm of Faerie – this seemed natural to me as we already had Darg, a spriggin from Faerie, resident in Kinfairlie’s keep. Obviously, Kinfairlie’s keep is built on some kind of nexxus that allows communication between the two worlds — remember the story of the rose in THE ROSE RED BRIDE. This incident, however, appears to have created some confusion for readers – I never anticipated that Rosamunde would go to heaven, but there seems to be a fear that she has died. Fear not! She’s in Faerie and really, there’s no better place to be while letting a broken heart mend. No matter how long it takes Rosamunde to get over Tynan, a much shorter interval will have passed in our world while she was gone.

Now, we return to the publishing world for the next wrinkle in this story.

3/ My initial plan was to write the books of all 8 siblings, which would then lead us to Inverfyre and the children of the Hawk and Aileen, all of whom would also require their own stories told. In my mind, I see another 8 or 10 books in this series. I love this world and its complexity, and I lover the characters and the interplay between them all. You see, I did a very foolish thing in publishing terms and assumed that I would have the opportunity to write the rest of the books in this series. I planned to resolve Rosamunde’s story in a book that wasn’t contracted yet, which seems to invite the gods of publishing to make things go awry.

4/ At the completion of the Jewels of Kinfairlie trilogy, I proposed another four books. This series is called The Truelove Brides and comprises Isabella’s story, Annelise’s story, Elizabeth’s story and Malcolm’s story. The premise is that the spriggins have not taken well to the sale of Ravensmuir’s relics which occurred in THE BEAUTY BRIDE. Being born troublemakers, they have been stealing back the relics from the people who purchased them. The victims of these crimes have blamed the Lammergeier family for the thefts (who would blame fairies?!) and the family’s honor is at stake. Alexander, with the help of Elizabeth, makes a wager with the spriggin, Darg, that if his four younger siblings marry their one true love within the year, then the spriggins will return the relics and leave Ravensmuir forever. Rosamunde’s tale is to be resolved as a subplot in Elizabeth’s story. My publisher, however, declined to make an offer for this proposal, which left Rosamunde in limbo, so to speak.

5/ One of the realities of writing romance is that houses don’t like to take on work that has common characters with work at other houses. I’m not sure why this is, as authors in other genres pack their characters along when they change houses. So, no other publishing house has been interested in picking up this story – they’d rather have a new and different story of their own. It doesn’t help matters that the market for historical romances is less robust than it has been in the past.

I am incredibly disappointed about all of this, so if you’re bummed out about it, you’re not alone! I’ve tried and tried to figure out a solution to get these books into print – and so has my agent – but we haven’t found it yet. The only strategy remaining is to wait for the rights to these six books to revert (which will be years, if it happens at all) then selling the whole lot, with the additional books, to another house. It’s also possible that something similar could happen to what happened with my Coxwell series – although Berkley initially passed on Matt and Zach’s books which complete the series, when they chose to reprint the first two books, they also bought the next two. So, the Coxwell series is complete, albeit after a delay. It would be nice to find a more immediate solution to the Kinfairlie and Ravensmuir conundrum, but I don’t know what it is.

So, if you have any ideas, feel free to share!