Mr. Renfred’s Masquerade

A brave new world, indeedy. :) I’ve already begun ten­ta­tive work on the new novel, which I’ve titled Mr. Renfred’s Mas­quer­ade. At around 700 words, I’ve been try­ing to remind myself to keep things sim­ple because I’m des­per­ate for that scene, writing-wise. After three nov­els back-to-back with odd plot com­pli­ca­tions here and there, I’m aching for a quiet, straight­for­ward romance.

And to make myself com­mit to the project, I set up a text wid­get on my side­bar about the story. I fig­ured that keep­ing the story sum­mary out there, in pub­lic view day after day, would serve as a much-needed kick up the butt because I have a really sad, sad ten­dency to wib­ble and wring my hands over choices. And I hate that.

I’ve already posted about Offenbach’s “Bar­carolle” as the song that inspired me to write the story in its orig­i­nal form. I’m also very much fas­ci­nated by Venice and the Venet­ian Car­ni­val, and with what I’ve stud­ied in Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture regard­ing plea­sure gar­dens such as Vaux­hall and Ranelagh, I’ve got a pretty good foun­da­tion of inspi­ra­tion sources for this story.

I want to make this novel a pretty easy project, espe­cially after the mas­sive beat­ing I got from Desmond and Gar­rick, so I’m default­ing to famil­iar ele­ments, though it’s a fan­tasy. It’s almost like a purge for me to bal­ance the pre­vi­ous angst-ridden months with upcom­ing light ones (I hope so, any­way). So we’re again look­ing at Eng­land in the 19th cen­tury, but even with Dominic’s family’s trade, which involves sell­ing “fast food” in the mar­ket­place for the poor work­ing class, we’re still tak­ing the con­ven­tional folk­tale route of generic cot­tages, peas­antry, magic, etc. Or at least I’d like the story to give off those “vibes.” :)

I’m about to revisit some old favorites on my shelves, not the least of which is Oscar Wilde’s col­lec­tion of short fic­tion (if you haven’t read his fairy tales, I highly rec­om­mend them; they’re sim­ply remark­able). I think I donated my copy of George Macdonald’s folk­tales, too, but I do have Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­sen. Fairy tales are decep­tively sim­ple, but I can still find tons of inspi­ra­tion from them, even with my goal of keep­ing Mr. Renfred’s Mas­quer­ade a straight­for­ward story.

EDIT: I guess I shouldn’t say “brave new world,” see­ing as how I’m plan­ning to waltz through famil­iar stomp­ing ground in a way. XD Oh, well.