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Release Day: The Lady’s Scandalous Night
 Posted by Jeannie Lin Sep 1 2011, 12:10 am in Ruby Release
We would spend the summers at Grandma’s house, often sleeping over. My grandmother seemed to have perpetual insomnia. She’d stay up very late at night knitting, wake up way early in the morning, and just take a nice long nap in the afternoon when we were expected to play nice and not disturb her. (I seem to have developed the same sleep patterns.) She’d keep the TV on at night and I remember laying on the couch and watching these late night samurai dramas while the click, click, click of her knitting needles sounded in the background. The dramas were in Japanese and only sometimes sub-titled. Grandma didn’t actually understand Japanese, but she didn’t understand English that well either.I couldn’t read that fast, so I was left trying to guess what was happening on the screen most of the time.
In retrospect, what was Grandma doing showing samurai dramas to a young impressionable girl like me? There was death and passion and star-crossed love and more death. In samurai films, all the good guys die. The heroine dies. Everybody dies and you are left to reflect on the impermanence of life and nobility of sacrifice. What a downer! I was left wondering why did they have to do that? Couldn’t they have done it another way? And so I kept on wondering and pondering for likely the next twenty or thirty years until the chance to write THE LADY’S SCANDALOUS NIGHT came along. And I finally saw a chance to put all those elements together: unbreakable oaths, loyalty, duty, sacrifice and love. I could take a noble hero who was ready to die and a strong-willed heroine who was just as ready to sacrifice herself, but I could finally REWRITE THE STORY. So you see, I think it’s a fallacy to assume that less thought and effort goes into writing a short story. Sometimes a short story comes from an idea that’s been a long time coming. Brainstorming and plotting and executing a short is like distilling alcohol down into one powerful shot. It goes down quickly, but should hit you twice as hard. At least, that’s my philosophy on it. THE LADY’S SCANDALOUS NIGHT releases today and is available from eHarlequin, Amazon, B&N and almost anywhere ebooks are sold. I’ll be giving away a digital copy to one commenter to celebrate. Official blurbage here: Tang Dynasty China, 759 A.D. Yao Ru Jiang, known as River, has woven many romantic dreams of honorable swordsman Wei Chen from her brother’s stories. Their meeting should have been a happy event; instead, Chen arrives to tell River he is duty bound to kill her brother for rebelling against the warlord they both serve. River would do anything to distract the handsome, conflicted warrior from his mission—even take him as a lover…. Where do you draw your inspiration from? Have you ever dug out some unexpected source of inspiration from your past? Share:
              
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Oh, the delicious melodrama! The extreme highs and lows of human emotion! I remember one heartbreaking scene where the heroine is dying in her fabulous kimono and the hero gives her water from his lips and it’s the first and only time they allow themselves to “kiss.” My little eight year old heart was racing.
Congrats on the release of your latest short story, Jeannie! I always wondered why there were no happy endings in those old samurai movies.
My hubby’s always telling me to write a humorous YA based on my experiences of growing up “ethnic” in a largely non-ethnic community. I’m not ready to write it yet — I need to let a few more years slide by first.
Btw, Amazon wouldn’t allow me to download your novella because I’m in Australia. I purchased it without a problem on the eHarlequin site instead. Yay!
Thanks Vanessa. It’d be nice if all the Amazons worldwide would be synced up, woudln’t it? But I’m glad eHarlequin worked!
Congratulations on your latest release, Jeannie! How satisfying to finally give those samurai warriors the happy ending they’d earned over and over again. Wishing you all possible success with this and looking forward to The Dragon & The Pearl!
Thanks Vivi!
Oh yes, and just a samurai disclaimer – the men in this story are not samurai (Japanese), they would be what’s considered xia, a Chinese heroic archtype and not a specific class.
[...] It’s the release day for my short story THE LADY’S SCANDALOUS NIGHT from Harlequin Historical Undone. I’m blogging about my inspiration behind the story and doing a giveaway over at The Ruby-Slippered Sisterhood. [...]
Love that gorgeous cover, Jeannie. I’m so glad you’re able to give them a HEA. Good luck with the release.
Thanks Kelly! I do love the look of the cover, though I did raise a slight eyebrow (not literally, cause I can’t raise one eyebrow in real life) at the perm. Chinese women do not have curly hair naturally…
Congratulations on your release, Jeannie. What a gorgeous cover!
Re: inspiration, I think I’ve talked here on the blog before about how I got the idea for my Underbelly Chronicles’ world at a Motley Crue show, wondering whether Tommy Lee was part incubus (sex demon) because of his cheerfully debauched behavior. In addition, some scenes in TASTE ME take place at a remote lake cabin in northern MN, which is an amalgam of a number of cabins and cottages I’ve stayed at over the years. It’s so fun when family and friends recognize a piece of THEIR cabin when reading my book!
Your LOLCat made me giggle. I, too, have a couple of melodrama kittehs at my house.
I stole the LOLcat idea from Dear Author. I was looking up “samurai drama” and lo and behold, a LOLcat pops up! There is truly a LOLcat for every situation.
Jeannie, My grandme must have known your grandma. I spent half my childhood at my grnadparents house (they lived next door). Some of my fondness memories is staying up with my grandme and watching the Late Show and the Late, Late Show only to go to bed when the stations went off the air (dating myself here, but I was really young. Really. LOL). An Affair To Remember was one of the movies we cried over. And One Touch Of Venus. I loved those films.
Thanks for making me smile and congrats on your new release. I know it’s going to be a great read.
Grandma’s house is where you get to stay up late and watch anything you want on TV, right? Oh my, I remember when TV used to go off-air. I remember when MTV was just a couple of hours of videos at night.
Thanks for the congrats! Every release feels a little special, doesn’t it?
Congratulations, Jeannie!
So, what language DID your grandmother speak/understand? My sister-in-law grew up speaking a regional dialect probably related to Tagalog, and while she eventually learned Tagalog (possibly concurrently) as well as English, Japanese, and Korean, I can see how easily an individual could grow up without knowing one of the world’s major languages.
Re: inspiration, sometimes I feel like that’s all I have. Its the execution that’s painful! (Sometimes. Like the last few days I’ve sat down to write. Pulling teeth, but some teeth just have to be pulled, you know?)
My grandmother and our entire family spoke Vietnamese. A not too tightly held secret is that I’m actually only part Chinese. Shhh! My great-grandmother was ethnically Chinese, but they were of the wealthy Chinese families who lived in Vietnam. How my great-grandmother and great-grandfather got married is actually a pretty fun story. He was a scholar who’d passed the civil exams (when Vietnam still had an Emperor and followed the Chinese government system). She was from a wealthy family. Smart as great-grandfather was, a clever matchmaker tricked him into an arranged marriage with great-grandma.
Feel free to fan some extra inspiration over here. I get very few ideas and between stories, I mope and wonder if the next idea will come.
That’s a great story!
One of my bridesmaids is also from an ethnic Chinese family that lived in Vietnam, but I don’t think they were wealthy. My recollection is that they eventually came to the US as refugees, which of course can include the wealthy, but I’d always thought that they were impoverished when they arrived, and built their wealth here.
By the time it came around to my parents, we weren’t wealthy anymore either. Political upheaval and all. There’s really quite a fascinating history there and I regret not knowing it for most of my life.
Wow, that cover!!!! Gorgeous! And what a great thing to channel, childhood memories. Wonderful post, Jeannie, and super congrats, Sistah!!! So excited for you!!!
Thanks!! And congrats on your recent release of Second Grave too. So many Ruby releases to choose from.
Happy release day! This shall do much to alleviate those The Dragon and the Pearl cravings.
Those dramas…so sweeping in every human emotion! I’ve never drawn inspiration from one (I don’t think), but there have been some that’ve made such a big impression on me that I can’t forget them. The frustrating part is trying to remember the titles, lol.
They all blend together for me. I was talking to my CP today about good shows for young children and it made me flash back to Grandma letting me watch samurai duke it out to the death. Imagine what my stories would be like if I had watched Blues Clues instead?
Ooh, I’m gonna be the same kind of grandma, I keep my tv on as well. (shh, I’m scared of the dark, don’t tell anyone:)) Love that cover and look forward to reading it!
It’s okay. Me and Autumn turned out okay. *looks left, looks right*
Jeannie,
Gorgeous cover, and wonderful story. I must add this to my ridiculous (and growing) TBR pile. Congrats on your release day.
As for inspiration — everyone knows the small town in my stories is very loosely based on a the place where I spent my summers. Not with a grandmother (mine died before I was born, sadly), but with a bunch of aunts and uncles.
Growing TBR indeed! I’ve just read through four books on the TBR, alternating between Kindle and print book to get it down before I buy more books in the Fall.
Welcome to Last Chance was one of those books (yeah, I must be the last person on the planet) and I loved all the secondary characters inhabiting the town. It reminded me a little bit of Simi Valley where I grew up. Okay, Simi is actually a big town now, but when I was little it was a sleepy little place with it’s own quirks.
OMG, you had me hooked with the blog post, but the heroine’s name is River? That’s my niece’s name! Consider it sold!
Besides, having read “Butterfly Swords”, if this is as you say, a “shot” version of a novel with twice the punch, this is something I absolutely must see!
Congratulations on the newest release AND the twins!
I was hoping people wouldn’t think River Tam from Serenity when I named the character River–though what a character there, huh? It made sense because her brother’s name is Ru Shan and shan means mountain, so I named her Ru Jiang, jiang meaning river.
Hope you enjoy the quick little “shot” of Tang Dynasty drama.
Congrats on the newest release, Jeannie. My childhood memories are of being surrounded by books. Very cerebral books with locked room puzzles and whodunit puzzles. Emotion was very much frowned on in our house. Stories like yours are very liberating.
And I love the kitten!
Cerebral puzzles would be awesome to work into a story…hmmm…I’m so bad at hunting plot bunnies, but there must be one hiding there somewhere.
I’m ashamed of how much LOLcats makes me laugh. That and Cake Wrecks.
Thanks for sharing the beautiful memory of your grandmother. Oddly, enough my grandmothers influenced my upcoming story released in October. I happen to think the women in my family are strong, but prone to drama. It’s okay. I like a little drama. So it got me thinking about a heroine who charges into the fray without thinking about what she’s doing. I even gave her the queen of all Southern drama’s name Scarlet (but I left out a “t”.) So, yeah, the women of my family totally inspired me with that one.
Congrats on the release…sounds intriguing
I definitely can see that your grandmothers influenced your work from Grandma’s sayings in Vegas Two-Step!
Wow, Jeannie, I’m with everyone else…gorgeous cover! And what great childhood memories to draw from. Congratulations on your release!
Inspiration for me often comes from my surroundings. I’ve been lucky enough to live in a couple of different countries, and the settings and differences in culture have worked their way into some of my manuscripts.
Congrats again, Jeannie. Looking forward to reading this!
It must be so fascinating having the perspective of having lived in different countries. I love to travel just to get a little glimpse, but you don’t really have time to get to know a place until you live there for a little while. Jealous!
Ooh!! This story sounds great! Can’t wait to download it (though I just started on Darynda’s SECOND GRAVE, and don’t think I’ll be able to read anything else til I race to the very last page of that!!)
The idea of the hero giving the dying heroine water from his own lips, and that being their only “kiss”….sigh!!!!!!!!
You’re making me antsy since I haven’t picked up my copy of Second Grave yet! I used to go to Borders for my weekly critique group and that’s where I’d do all my book buying, but…*sigh* And I’m already hearing buzz about Third Grave too.
The kiss was just one of those memorable scenes that stuck with me as a kid. Another one was Mark Antony & Cleopatra’s last kiss in the Elizabeth Taylor movie.
congrats on release day, jeannie! i’m excited for the dragon and the pearl to hit the stores and will be sure to grab this one online, too
Thanks! I’m quite excited myself. Hope you enjoy.
What a wonderful cover! Happy release day!!!!
Love the cover! Love that you drew from all those memories to create this story, too. But yeah…what was your Grandma thinking? Probably that you should be in bed and since you weren’t you’d watch whatever she wanted to watch!
I haven’t tried anything short yet. It intimidates me a bit. So I’m always in awe of people who do it, and do it well! Congrats on the release, Jeannie!
Did this contest ever end? Or can I still win “The Lady’s Scandalous Night”?
I ask because today I FINALLY got around to starting the NetGalley ARC of “The Dragon and the Pearl” I received back in August, figuring I could get in a chapter or two before finding a good place to stop.
Thirteen chapters later, midnight local time, it is beginning to dawn on me that you aren’t going to give me a good place to stop, are you?