Brit Week ~ Charlie Cochrane

Charlie Cochrane is my guest today and she brings her own special take on this week's Invasion!
Two nations, separated not only by a common language

Jeanne, thank you so much for letting me drop into your blog. You’ve a real invasion of Brits this week, although I suspect I’m the only one who’s half cockney and half Geordie.

I’ve been writing historical stories, all set in the British Isles and in the early part of the 20th century, although I have to own up to one totally different tale, a contemporary short story about gay werewolves in the anthology Queer Wolf. It was great to be able to take all sorts of humorous digs at contemporary things - like tabloid newspapers and premiership footballers - who got woven into the tale.

Much of my time at present is taken up with my series for Samhain, the Cambridge Fellows Mysteries, m/m romances set in Edwardian Cambridge and featuring the contrasting pair of Jonty Stewart and Orlando Coppersmith. http://www.mybookstoreandmore.com/shop/author.da/405. I’ve also got a Regency m/m novella (with a ghost) just out in e-book for MLR - http://www.mlrbooks.com/upcoming.php - that’s with Stevie Woods, who’s also appearing on your blog this week.

Something that continually strikes me, in researching, in talking to fellow authors, in doing edits, is the huge difference between the USA and the UK. In everything. Yes, we all know the differences in vocabulary – breaks into Fred and Ginger –

“You say sidewalk, we say pavement,
you say trunk, we say boot,
cookie, biscuit,
jello, jelly,
let’s call the whole thing off!”

But there’s lots of little bits of speech which puzzle my poor editors. The most recent was “Chance would be a fine thing” which clearly hasn’t crossed the Atlantic. Yet. And I guess there’s things which are so linked to our culture – Nora Batty’s wrinkled stockings or Arkwright’s till spring to mind for the TV age – that they simply can’t be translated.

So we don’t talk alike. I suspect we don’t think alike, either. The British sense of humour – dry, pawky, call it what you want – doesn’t always travel well, either. I rely on my editor to pick out the jokes or little asides which are too obscure for universal approval. The continual self-deprecation and easy banter is something that doesn’t always connect with my American pals. And we’re hard taskmasters, too – if Dancing with the Stars was made here, no-one would earn a ten!

Both Jonty and Orlando are ‘typically English’, as are William and Benjamin in the Regency story. I love Max Arthur’s books containing soldiers’ and pilots’ recollections of the two world wars – when I read some of the things from WWI veterans I can almost hear Jonty talking. I think it’s really important to get your characters talking in an argot which feels right for the time without being too ‘Hollywood historical’. Perhaps the nicest compliment I’ve received from a reader was that my books felt like an episode of Masterpiece Theatre, which is a huge compliment. The stories certainly play out in my head like some BBC adaptation.

Now, here’s a controversial thought. Do some of our US cousins imagine that all of us Brits have a lifestyle that’s like one of those Masterpiece Theatre stories? I’ve suspected it since one my dear pals from California was shocked to find that white Christmasses are so rare here as to be almost anachronistic. The view was confirmed when some ex-pat friends of ours were asked if we all wore crinolines in England. (No, we don’t. We dress pretty much the same as you do, surprisingly.)

Maybe that perception is because we are so surrounded by history here. When I visit our local town for shopping, I take a little shortcut past a 13th century hunting lodge with Tudor additions and come out by an Abbey which is over 1000 years old. Then I nip round to the old Cornmarket square, past an iron shop sign where two soldiers were hung during the civil war. (Ours.) And I take it all for granted, like many of my compatriots. At least it makes my job easier – go to Cambridge or Bath and you can easily imagine yourself back in time. Some of the locations have hardly changed.

So bear with us, please, even if we seem eccentric or talk in a strange language. We’re lovely, really.

You can find out more about me at my website http://www.charliecochrane.co.uk/ or at my blog, http://charliecochrane.livejournal.com/.

Thanks again, Charlie for a fun post. Now, if someone can translate some of those TV phrases I'd be eternally grateful!