Uther Pendragon: Blog

I know a guy who -- whenever someone says "You're crazy" to him -- responds with , "Yrah, but I'm saving up for 'eccentric.'"

That's a nod to the principle that behavior that would commit a poor man to the asylum is brushed aside as "eccentric" among the rich and powerful.

That's even more true of a reigning king than of an ordinary rich man.

In 1811, though, King George III became so obviously crazy that not even his ministers could ignore it. His son, the Price of Wales was made regent.

This produced the period of English history called "The Regency." It lasted until 1820, when George III died, and the Prince Regent became King George IV.

Jane Austen lived during this period and wrote of it. 20th-cenntury writers fell in love with the period, and created the genre called, "Regency Romances." They consciously ape Austen, but there are notable distinctions.

1) Austen wrote about county society.

Regency-romance writers concentrate on "the Ton," the apex of London society. The word meant "fashionable society."

2) Austen's subjects ranged from quite comfortable to notably rich, but they were not titled. Austen described *MR.* Darcy's estate so lovingly that modern literary critics believe that they have identified the original; it was a ducal residence. Austen, OTOH, did not give Darcy a title.

Regency-romance authors nearly always give their heroes a title, and Duke much more often than baron.

3) Although Austen's novels take place during the Napoleonic wars, she barely mentions them.

Well, my Tarleton universe, the first story of which is _Councils of War,_ which began recently, are Regency romances. I make 2 exceptions.

1) I know a little history, and where Regency romances ignore historical conditions, I reserve the right to be slightly more realistic.

2) I'm quite ready to run past 1820.

Enjoy!

Sparky's Dad, my recent seerial about Diane and Eric, will end in a few hours. Will they life happily ever after? Will I write a sequel?

No, and No.

People don't live happily ever after. (John Barth writes that the Arabian-Nights version of that specifically mentions death.) Certainly, couples with the inherent conflicts that Eric and Diane have don't.

OTOH< they have more going for them than some comments seem to think. Valerie/Sparky, for one.

As Diane settles into her practice, she will have an arena in which she is the star. Some day, she'll see a kid who looks abused; the law calls on her to report that; she won't have the slightest fear of the parent having more resources than she can muster.

Eric was perfectly happy with a wife who decided his clothes and his menu, enjoyed his money and let him enjoy her enjoyment. Diane won't provide quite the same, but she does have a history of caring for lost strays.

On a third hand, what happens when Valerie wants more freedom, Diane agrees with her, and Eric doesn't?

What happens when Diane brings home a disease from work and Sparky catches it?

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I have another serial starting real soon now. It's a Regency Romance. It will have just what some people enjoyed about Sparky's Dad; it wont have what others enjoyed about that story. Read it and see.

In the mean while, I'll be posting some short stories -- many of them short-shorts. I have 140 other stories already on the site. Some commenters have compared Sparky's Dad to the Brennan stories. If you haven't read them, try them out.

This is a celebratory event for many people.

Others feel sad. For Effort is about feeling sad on Mother's Day.

Usually, I recommend reading the Brennan stories starting from the first. If you want a story about being sad on Mother's Day, though, read this one.

I've had several complaints that Diane is not seeing Eric's obvious interest in her on a permanent basis.

Well, she decided on what their relationship was early. She noted inconsistencies between his actions and her model, but people act inconsistently all the time.

One reason that she didn't jump on the alternative explanation is that she didn't think she could live with the alternative explanation.

When one inconsistency got too great, she asked. She acted on the answer.

Now, she knows what Eric wants.

I don't think I've made her terribly irrational.

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In the real-live USA, there are hugr numbers of people who believe that lower taxes o the rich are great accellorators of economic growth.

Every time that there is a tax cut on the rich, they tell us that this will lead to tremendous growth.

Then the next time, they point out that we habe anemic growth, and we should have another tax cut for the rich, because that always leads to great growth

Simply the two bold words point out the irrationality of that statement.

So, my fictional character had a cotrafactual model for what was happening. She, however, edited her model to account for events.

I claim that she was not unbelievably cut off from reality

I've been much heartened by the response to Sparky's Dad, especially the response to the first three chapters which had no sex.

Thanks to everybody who wrote, whether by comment or by individual letter -- some of which caught typos.

As I said in the beginning, this story has 18 chapters. If you post a chapter of more than 55 K, the software splits it into sections.
I don't like that, so my chapters are less than 55 K in length and are what I consider logical divisions.

I generally send my stories in much earlier than they appear. They are currently scheduled to appear Monday through Friday. That means after 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time on the scheduled days.

The exception is Chapter 2 of serials. You can post any number of chapters to appear at the same time, but you cannot schedule a later chapter to appear on a later day until the serial exists -- i.e. until the first chapter has been posted. So, my chapter 1 was visible to the moderators at 8 on Monday; my chapter 2 was visible to the moderators when I posted it on Wednesday. That day, I posted half a dozen more chapters to appear on later days (visible to the moderators at 8 p.m. on those days). I sent the rest of the chapters for later posting a few days later.

While this is the first posting of Sparky's Dad anywhere, most of the other stories I've been posting recently have been posted previously on ASSM.

I pride myself on the diversity of my stories.

My longest story, Heart Ball has almost precisely 2000 times as many words as my shortest, Pharmacy.