A- Adventure

I am a great one for jumping on band-wagons, aren't I? It seems that my ideas for blogging are very seldom my own--and good reason. I don't claim to be supremely clever, and when a dashed good idea has already been created by someone who is supremely clever, I don't see a call to change it. The band-wagon I speak of this time, is the A-Z event that several authors I know (Jenny Freitag and Anne Elisabeth Stengl to begin with) have done. The general idea is that I will write a post for each letter of the alphabet running right through the course of one of my novels.
Just as Jenny chose Adamantine for her A-Z event because she was not actively working on it and therefore didn't get much time to speak of it anymore, so I have chosen The Scarlet-Gypsy Song. You've heard much of Fly Away Home, and it's almost through its last edits before I pack it off to the agents and hope they want a saucy little inspirational romance. The Scarlet-Gypsy Song hasn't got much space here for some time, and I want to remedy that as I go back through making edits and rewriting. Hence, I give you the Letter A.

A- Adventure

The maid folded her hands over her stomach and sighed. “Well if he had been the sort of father to read things to his children, you’d know all about us.”

Adelaide felt her world growing and shrinking all at once in a dizzying fashion almost as bad as the music-box. “You mean—”

“Aye. We’re all his characters. This is his story. We are all at his command, y’might say. Whatever he writes we live.”

“And we’ve stepped into it?”

“Aye. Right into the darkest days Scarlettania has ever seen.”

I'm sure it will come as no surprise to you that half a dozen children tumbling into their father's story-world are bound to have adventures of some sort. I mean really. Voice-changing panthers and traitors and villains and a country at war with its neighbor is not the sort of thing calculated to conjure up a dull game of golf. You're bound to fall in with a rough crowd or two. It only compounds the error when your father is the one supposed to be writing these "adventures" for you and he...well...slacks off in his writing for a bit and these so-called adventures start to run out of hand. Then you've got kidnappers to deal with...kidnappers and full out battle...and second kidnappers...and really third ones if you want to be picky about it.

“Adoniram—you simply can’t let Darby and Bertram go to battle—you can’t. It’s…it’s…indecent! If it was happening in London someone would call the Agency.”

             The pen stopped. The head rose. The eyes glared. “My love—it is not happening in London. There has not been a battle in the streets of the Capital since the time of your grandfather. Therefore, I would greatly appreciate your silence and a cup of tea.

Of course this certainty of adventure excites Adelaide, Bertram, Charlotte, Darby, and the babies....at first. Afterward? Well...there is no guarantee they'd be scrambling for first-row tickets...or perhaps they would. One never knows with this sort of thing. At any rate, The Scarlet-Gypsy Song has enough plot twists to furnish full-time adventure for six children. I should hope they enjoyed a moment or two of it. 

Cecily pulled Mrs. Macefield toward the tea-things and, like an automaton, began the process of making tea. What a very strange story this had become.