#barbara kirkmann

[prettylittlelyres]

February Excerpts - 13th February

Violins and Violets - Book One

Chapter Twenty-Five

It hurt to pull my hands free of hers, and it hurt my chest to pull it away from hers. "Don't make me this person," I whispered. "What person?" She reached for my hand, but I pulled it free again. "The person who waits for someone to leave their beau. Or their belle, in Herr Schneider's case." I made for the door. "I don't want to be the other woman. I won't do it for a man, and I won't do it for you."

I’m sharing excerpts of my first two “Violins and Violets” every day in February, at 8am and 8pm GMT. Stay tuned, dear friends!

[prettylittlelyres]

February Excerpts - 12th February

Violins and Violets - Book One

Chapter Twenty-Three

“But… you and I will still be friends?” I nodded. “I can’t imagine my life without you,” I said quietly, resting my forehead against hers. She pressed the tip of her nose against the bulb of mine, and squeezed her eyes shut as she hugged me. “Good,” she said, “Then I’ll tell him yes, and we’ll start thinking about how we want our wedding to go.” She opened her eyes, pulled away from me, and smiled. “Will you be there?” I had to chuckle there. “What on Earth would I be doing instead?” I said, “Even if I did have a social life outside of you, I wouldn’t miss it for anything. You’re…” I smiled at her now, too. “I think you’re my very best friend.” She squeezed my hands. “And you,” she said… bending her neck to press a quick kiss to my cheek, “Are mine, I think.”

I’m sharing excerpts of my first two “Violins and Violets” every day in February, at 8am and 8pm GMT. Stay tuned, dear friends!

[prettylittlelyres]

February Excerpts - 22nd February

Violins and Violets - Book Two

Chapter Twelve

His eyes fell on the sheet music I had discarded on the floor. “Oh, what’s that? I bent to pick it up. “It’s nothing. I’m just going to use it as kindling.” His face fell. “Oh, Herr Schmidt, don’t say you’re going to burn something you’ve written?” “It’s just rubbish,” I mumbled, showing it to him. “Oh, who’s Barbara?” His eyes it up. I froze. “Nobody,” I lied, too quickly, and feeling awful as I did. “A friend from Salzburg. Things… Things didn’t go the way I wanted them to.” “Ah, so it’s a lovelorn lament!” Herr Kovács said, reading the music. He frowned. “Herr Schmidt, this is beautiful. Don’t tell me you were actually going to burn it.”

Hello, friends! Here we are in the second “Violins and Violets” book. It’s considerably shorter (I got to the point more quickly in this one) than the first, so there are just 22 chapters to share. Stay tuned for excerpts at 8am and 8pm GMT!

[prettylittlelyres]

February Excerpts - 15th February

Violins and Violets - Book One

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Barbara held me tighter. "Nobody can make you get married," she said, "You can say no. You can come with me when I leave. If the worst comes to it, you have a brother in Vienna. You can run to him." Running away… now there was an idea.

I’m sharing excerpts of my first two “Violins and Violets” every day in February, at 8am and 8pm GMT. Stay tuned, dear friends!

[prettylittlelyres]

February Excerpts - 5th February

Violins and Violets - Book One

Chapter Ten

I stretched my hands out, and began to play. Thought of Barbara dancing around the kitchen, her hands intertwined with my own as she turned me through the Ländler. Waltzing… I opened my eyes wide as I brought the piece to an end. Waltzing? Me and Barbara? My heart was beating fast, and my cheeks were burning.

I’m sharing excerpts of my first two “Violins and Violets” every day in February, at 8am and 8pm GMT. Stay tuned, dear friends!

[prettylittlelyres]

February excerpts - 4th February

Violins and Violets - Book One

Chapter Seven

The music swelled like a ripening peach, golden light sparkling off drops of flame-yellow juice. The flighty breath of the flute fluttered like a red admiral butterfly, and the ceaseless hum of the cello throbbed like a pounding heart.

I thought of Barbara dancing in a dark red dress, laughing as she pulled off the cap she always wore, and let her wavy red hair tumble down her back. I had never seen Barbara's hair, except for the little bit that poked out of the corners of her cap, but that - and her pale eyebrows and eyelashes - was enough for me to know it was red. It was a beautiful rusty auburn that matched the sound of her voice.

I'm sharing excerpts of my first two "Violins and Violets" every day in February, at 8am and 8pm GMT. Stay tuned, dear friends!

[prettylittlelyres]

February Excerpts - 3rd February

Violins and Violets - Book One

Chapter Six

I took my violin out to the courtyard, along with a few pieces of paper that I weighted to the garden table with my inkbottle. Letting the dappled shade guide my mind, I started to play a light, lilting piece that I thought Barbara might like to dance to. The melody blossomed reddish-pink like her voice, and I started thinking about the harmonies. There should be some rich, golden notes in the bass, I thought - a cello could play them - with raindrops on leaves making them sparkle in the sunlight… a flute to play their bright notes. And the violin, the sunbeams themselves, dripping down into an orchard.

I'm sharing excerpts of my first two "Violins and Violets" every day in February, at 8am and 8pm GMT. Stay tuned, dear friends!

[prettylittlelyres]

Ladies Don't Write Music- 5th/6th November 2023 - update

Hello, friends! It's been a busy few days of writing for me and my naNoWriMo project. so busy in fact, that I didn't even have time to write an update here yesterday before I fell asleep after hitting my wordcount.

So, I am writing both my updates today, on Monday 6th November, which has been even prosier than Sunday 5th.

Yesterday, I realised I hadn't left my house in several days, because I work from home and the weather's been horrible (to the point that going out would even have been dangerous), so I remedied that with a walk. It was the right thing to do: a swash of fresh air was what my brain needed to oil those creaky gears, and I wrote a total of 2,217 words. I wanted to finish Chapter 9, but didn't quite get it done.

I've carried on working on it today, with a total of 2,693 words (mostly written this evening, although I did a 20-minute sprint before work this morning, too. Chapter 9 is finally functionally finished - I estimate another 500 words (oh,God!) and want to finish it tomorrow.

Time for a celebratory except!

I began to play the dance I had written for Barbara, bringing in a left-hand part that was fresh like a newly-unfurling leaf. But I couldn’t help thinking about the way we had left things, with harsh words and a cold goodnight, and how we had not spoken since. The figure I had seen skipping around in my head when I had written the piece for violin no longer looked like Barbara. Now the figure was a man, and he did not seem to be dancing alone.

And yet he was alone: his dance partner was not visible, although he was clearly dancing with someone. Every step, every turn, every movement of his hands clearly accommodated another person I couldn’t see.

[prettylittlelyres]

Violins and Violets - Book 1 - Update

I wrote about 600 words on the first "Violins and Violets" book before I went to sleep last night.

(I'm going to make this another "Inside the Writing Process" post.)

Inside the Writing Process - Part 11 - Writing at Night

I was already in bed, with all the lamps in my room switched off. Only the keys on my Bluetooth keyboard shedding any light in the room. It's a great environment for settling down while I get some writing done, and sometimes it makes me dream about my characters!

(The dream thing didn't work last night, but I did get a page written.)

The thing is, writing so late at night, I tend to drift off here and there while I'm writing. That's why I use a Bluetooth keyboard, instead of my laptop (which has vents that need to be kept clear, and won't like being knocked off the bed when I roll over in my sleep).

Sometimes I transcribe conversations from my dreams, and sometimes I end up holding down the same keyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy for ages, and wake up to find one incredibly long word waiting for me at the end of my WIP.

Sometimes I completely forget what I've written, and then get a nasty surprise in the morning when I look at it and find it's just a worse-written version of a scene that I had already finished.

I went to check last night's work this morning, and was worried I'd find that the latter had happened, or that I'd have written pure gibberish. But for once I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Historical NA novel, with its Sapphic protagonist, had taken a rather Queer turn in the night!

(I wouldn't call this part of the series a Historical/Sapphic Romance, because the protagonist isn't in a relationship with anyone, and spends the whole book trying to avoid it - she doesn't realise she's Sapphic yet, and won't for a while - because she's being pushed to marry a man. But it's set in 1784-1785, and follows a 19-20 year-old woman trying to forge her own identity, so it fits firmly into the Historical NA subgenre.)

Although I'd completely forgotten about it, and this certainly wasn't part of the plan when I wrote my snowflake synopsis, Katharina gets a visit from her new friend Elisabeth, and they spend a happy afternoon together playing the harpsichord (deeply homoerotic activity)... upon which rather a shadow is cast when Katharina's old friend, Barbara, finds out, and thinks she's being replaced (although she has no idea how).

We love a bit of jealousy. We love a bit of characters not being able to communicate because they don't understand themselves. We love a homoerotic keyboard-instrument duet, and the rumble of trouble brewing in the distance...

Very excited to find out what happens next in my book. I've (supposedly) got it all written down, but if this scene popped up and took me by surprise, it probably won't be the only one that does.

[prettylittlelyres]

Violins and Violets - Series - WIP page

1784: Katharina Schmidt and her brother Hans grew up composing and performing music for royalty all over Europe. Now they are adults, only Hans is allowed to pursue his music, while Katharina's father tells her it's time to find a husband and settle down. Katharina's attempts to do as she's told only convince her that it's not what she wants to do, and she must decide how far she's willing to go to keep making music.

Hello, friends! It's been a minute since I updated the links on my blog, and I have just seen that I still have the "Beta Readers Wanted" post linked to the "Violins and Violets (WIP)" button... from the draft I finished and started querying in 2019 / 2020!

Things have... changed somewhat since then...

"Violins and Violets" is now a series, of (I expect) five books. None of them have titles yet, so I'm just referring to them as "Violins and Violets 1," etc. I thought it was time to make a new WIP page.

Book 1 tag - WIP page - first draft completed in December 2023, second draft in May 2024. (Earlier titled "Ladies Don't Write Music" - but this may be a better name for Book 2.)

Book 2 tag - WIP page - first draft completed in January 2024, now writing second draft in June and July 2024.

Book 3 tag - early planning stages, hoping to create outline in October 2024, with a view to writing the first draft in November and December 2024. Hoping to redraft in 2025.

Book 4 tag - hoping to plan and draft in 2025.

Book 5 tag - hoping to plan and draft in 2025 or 2026.

Series tag - all posts made about "Violins and Violets" since I realised it needed to be a series, no matter what book I'm talking about.

Everything "Violins and Violets" - the whole story, right from the beginning, when I started writing the first draft of a single book for Camp NaNoWriMo in April 2018.

One-Shots - short stories that I've written for the "Violins and Violets" world.

"Vogeltje" - another novel that takes place in the same world, and features some of the same characters.

I'm trying to bring each book in somewhere around 75,000 words, taking three months to write a first draft, and two months for each subsequent draft. I find it easier to focus on the story proper when I write quickly and regularly, so when I have a draft on the go, I try to write every day. Between drafts, I am trying to take whole months off writing, so that I can rest my creative muscles, as it were.

You can follow my progress here on my writeblr, and on the NaNoWriMo website.

Characters:

Katharina Schmidt - musical prodigy and composer who performed for royalty as a child, but is no longer allowed, because she's a woman. Disguises herself as "Sebastien", and flees Salzburg to start a composing career in Prague

Hans Schmidt - brother of Katharina, who is also a musical prodigy and composer, but is allowed to pursue his music as an adult.

Franz Schmidt - solicitor; father of Katharina and Hans, who wants to see his daughter married well enough to put silly ideas of music out of her head.

Julia Schmidt - lady of leisure; mother of Katharina and Hans; wife of Franz, who loves to make tapestries and knitted garments; wants the best for her children and is willing to let Franz decide what this is.

Barbara Kirkmann - housemaid to the Schmidts, Katharina's closest friend and confidante.

Elisabeth Meyer - daughter of Franz' boss, Katharina's first "acceptable" friend, and the oldest sister of many siblings; keen to get married and start a life of her own.

Miléna von Tritten - Elisabeth's best friend, and daughter of one of the Meyer firm's wealthiest clients, Baron von Tritten; expected to marry a noble, but totally absorbed in Johann Schneider.

Johann Schneider - training to be a magistrate, under pressure to get married, but totally uninterested in... anyone? All the ladies want him; none of them can catch him. Absolutely tone-deaf, but loves to watch musicians play; friends with Katharina.

Louisa Schneider - Johann's younger sister, also tone-deaf, but keen to become a musician under Katharina's tutelage.

Magdalena Fialová - an opera singer who wants to get more young women into music; one of "Sebastien's" first and best friends in Prague.

Miklós Kovács - a fellow violinist who persuades the management of the Malá Strana Opera House to give "Sebastien" an audition. Best friend of Magdalena, and very close with "Sebastien".

Background:

Yes, Katharina Schmidt is based on Maria Anna "Nannerl" Mozart, who deserved a much better life than she got. I have always wondered what would have happened if she had defied her father when he told her to stop composing. Would she have known as much fame as her brother?

Yes, Katharina Schmidt is a lesbian. That's because she's only based on a real person; she isn't actually Nannerl Mozart. I have no idea what Nannerl Mozart would have called herself, or how she felt, and I think it would be rude for me to try to guess. This part of Katharina's character is inspired less by history than by my own experiences and desire to see more representation of Queer people in historical fiction. (She's not the only person in the series who isn't straight! Who are the others? You'll have to read the books to find out... or just follow here; I'm yappy about it.)