A Dish Served Cold - Brenda W. Clough - Qs&As

 

Today, we're continuing our author interviews for the Historical Writers Forum's new anthology, To Wear a Heart So White. I'm thrilled to be welcoming Brenda W. Clough onto the Crowvus blog, to talk about her story, A Dish Served Cold. Read on to hear all about her inspiration, writing pre-existing characters, and gems uncovered during research...

First of all, can you please tell us about yourself and your writing?

I am best known for science fiction and fantasy – my first novel came out in 1984 from DAW Books. All my stuff overlaps with historical, however – historical SF, historical fantasy, and sometimes just straight historical! A great example of this was in Clarkesworld Magazine last year, where “Clio’s Scroll” came out. It’s first contact with aliens, time travel, and Dante Alighieri in 13th century Tuscany.

In relation to A Dish Served Cold, where did your inspiration come from?

I’ve written twelve novels about Miss Marian Halcombe, first seen in Wilkie Collins’ 1860 novel THE WOMAN IN WHITE. This classic Victorian thriller was a monster best seller in its day, and it’s -obvious- that Collins should have written a sequel. There should be more stories about Marian Halcombe, a proto-feminist who was that rare Victorian heroine – not blonde, not languishing, not frail. Somebody had to do it, so I did.

A Dish Served Cold’ is an adventurelet that fits in between two of the main novels. The villain of that novel escaped, and Marian had to deal with him.

What would you say are the pros and cons of writing in first-person narrative?

THE WOMAN IN WHITE, and therefore all my sequels to it, were epistolatory – written in the form of letters and journal entries or after-the-fact accounts. I stuck to this like glue. You just have to believe (as the Victorian reader did) that everybody, every evening, sits down with the journal and writes an exact and wildly complete account of all the day’s events however elaborate.

This generates a number of problems. The author is forced to cook up a distinctive style and viewpoint for each narrator. In my case, since Marian is writing a journal, she only records today’s happenings. Writing it down helps her to figure out what’s going on, and serves as a record that she can refer back to. The other major narrator in the novel, her brother-in-law Walter Hartright, is writing from a point in the future. He can look back at events and say things like “Little did I know that the treacherous earl had a gun,” that kind of thing. However I have gotten  the ‘voices’ by the neck. Marian, confident of her journal’s privacy, can be frank about, say, her sex life (although she hews rigidly to Victorian convention which means that everything is G rated). Walter is stuffy, snobbish and, from his later POV, pontificates.

The other difficulty is selecting other narrators, and finding an excuse for them to be keeping a record. A lot of correspondence had to be generated.

A Dish Served Cold is well researched – it really transports readers into the realm of Victorian London with its descriptions and settings. What was the most surprising thing you uncovered during research?

I had not begun with the intent of writing about women’s issues. But wow, there were some horrific ways to oppress women in that period! I found tons of them, and wedged as many as I could into the books. Did you know that, since your father, husband, or brother was paying your medical bills (you didn’t have a bank account of your own), he’d be paying your doctor bills and therefore be talking to your medico? This became especially dicey when hubby had an STD. There were wives who never realized they had syphilis (incurable in the period) because the doctor, instructed by hubby, never told her. Isabella Beeton, author of Mrs. Beeton’s cookery books, died of syphilis without every knowing what was wrong with her – her ratbag husband didn’t want her to know he was sleeping around. 

Disseminating the information about birth control was a crime – it counted as porn. I immediately had to get Marian’s husband arrested for distribution of a pamphlet about barrier methods.

Your story uses a number of pre-existing characters. What are the benefits and the difficulties of using characters which are already in the public domain?

I think it’s important that the characters sound and act like themselves – like the way the other author wrote them. Otherwise, readers will be disappointed. All the ones I invent myself, I can and do go wild, but characters like Marian, or Alan Quatermain in this story, I am hoping the original authors will not mind!

This short story fits into a series of books you’ve written with Marian. Did you find it was more fun writing her in short story form, or do you prefer writing full books with her? Why?

Flash fiction is a modern invention. Victorian thrillers do better at a longer length, simply because the plots need elbow room. How can you drag all your characters to Central America to search for treasure in a long-lost jungle city in a mere 5000 words? Or uncover a plot to assassinate the Tsar, or blackmail Queen Victoria? You’ll notice that in this story Marian has already met and bested the wicked Baron, and this is a later encounter. He turns up once more, at the very end of the series. I’m very good at knitting – tying together long strands of plot and character.

And finally, what’s next for you and your writing?

In the course of the Marian novels I invented a pirate kingdom in the South China Sea. She got shipwrecked and met and married a tall, dark and handsome pirate and he needed a background, what could I do? This is where the SF and fantasy comes in – it’s perfectly easy to whip up an imaginary nation, complete with culture, history, and political angst. And having made up the place, I wrote another three historicals about it. They are very different, from Marian and from each other. A DOOR IN HIS HEAD is about healing, A DEAL IN HER POCKET is pure romance, and this last one, HIS SELACHIAN MAJESTY REQUESTS, begins in 1979 and is sharks, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.

To Wear a Heart So White is available here on #KindleUnlimited

So let's meet the book...

A cost for every action, and a price for every deed.

The Historical Writers’ Forum proudly presents seven stories of Crime and Punishment, from across the ages. From an anchoress to a war hero; from Italy to Missouri; this anthology has a story for everyone.

Included stories are:

The Ignoble Defence - Virginia Crow

Agatha’s Eyes - Rachel Aanstad

A Pact Fulfilled - Eleanor Swift-Hook

Carte de Viste - Ronan Beckman

A Dish Served Cold - Brenda W. Clough

Shadows of the Adriatic - Tessa Floreano

A Dangerous Road - D. Apple

Now, lets meet the author...

Brenda W. Clough

Brenda W. Clough is the first female Asian-American SF writer, first appearing in print in 1984. Her latest work is a novelette, ‘Clio’s Scroll’, which appeared in Clarkesworld in July 2023. A historical novel A Door In His Head won the 2023 Diverse Voices Award. Her novella ‘May Be Some Time’ was a finalist for both the Hugo and the Nebula awards and became the novel Revise the World. Marian Halcombe, a series of eleven neo-Victorian thrillers appeared in 2021.

Her complete bibliography is up on her webpage brendaclough.net