“Don’t drop him, Will,” said Fred, compositer for The Teatime Tattler.
“It would serve him right,” Will, the pressman, grumbled. “This is all his fault.”
“Let’s not argue about this again,” Fred responded. “We need him to write some articles, so I can typeset them and you can print them, so Mr Clemens doesn’t fire the lot of us when he gets back from Paris.”
“He’s the one that should be fired,” Will complained. “He promised Mr Clemens he’d find enough correspondents to fill the paper for the whole of May and all of June, too. And what has he done? Drunk half of London dry, that’s what he’s done. Why should we save his bacon?”
“Because ours will be cooked along with his, that’s why. Now drop him here, and I’ll tip a bucket of water over him while you make the coffee.”
Help! The Bluestocking Belles have spaces for the rest of the year in The Teatime Tattler, and we need gossip about your characters and blurbs and covers for your book! New releases, backlist, current promotions—we take them all. We’ve even printed articles set in the worlds of role-playing Facebook pages and groups.
If you’re an author, read on. If you’re a reader, please help us out and share this article with your author friends.
The situation is desperate. The Editor went off on holiday to Paris, and the assistant editor was meant to promote the paper, but fell down on the job. And it was Sam’s first summer holiday in seven years!
We have spaces all the way to the end of the year.
Samuel Clemens (our fictional London-based uncle to the more famous American nephew) is due back any minute, and the assistant editor is for the chop unless we can show some great bookings.
What’s in it for you and your readers?
You get something fun to share with your fans.
You have the joy of playing with minor characters or backstory, or taking a cheeky peek at your hero or heroine through the eyes of an outsider.
We Bluestocking Belles promote your article by sharing it on Twitter, Pinterest, Tumbler and Facebook, then each individual Belle shares again to Facebook groups and pages.
What can you write for us?
In 150 to 500 words:
- Have a minor character report on what they see happening in the story.
- Use a character snippet to give backstory to your novel. If you create a scene of some sort, put a note over the top that a gossip sheet might have such as “Overheard at a . . .”
- Create a correspondence between two characters
- Stage a lecture on a controversial topic
- Have Mr. Clemens interview a character during a public lecture
- Write a “report” by a fictional reporter
- Write on a topic from your research. Report it as a character from that era.
- Or propose another take on a suitable gossip sheet topic
Then send us your blurb, your cover, your buy links, your bio and mugshot, and any other images you’d like us to use.
Fiona rolled her eyes, something her stepmother would never have approved of. The thought of her stepmother made her chest ache. Would they ever see one another again?
Can you enlighten me about the boisterous clan of Bigglesworth women that have invaded York Society this Season? The younger daughters are being launched (one might say cast upon us) and are being feted hither and yon as “the Seahaven Diamonds.” Anyone who is anyone scurried about hoping for invitations to the grand ball they hosted to celebrate said launch, though my own invitation went astray. But that is neither here nor there.
The Earl of Seahaven desperately wanted a son and heir but died leaving nine daughters and a fifth wife. Cruelly turned out by the new earl, they live hand-to-mouth in a small cottage.
Employed at a hotel in order to assist her stepmother, Lady Dorothea Bigglesworth had no use for a title. It would only invite scorn, or, worse, pity. Plain Miss Doro Bigglesworth suited her fine.
Working together at Pilgrim’s Rest, neither saw the need to mention it to the other, before fate separated them. When they were formally introduced after an unexpected reunion— in a ballroom in York—shock rocked them both. Can their budding love survive?