18th Century - Lawrence Hogue

(One in an occasional series of posts on the background material for my novel, Daring and Decorum. See the rest of the series here.)

I thought I’d post a collection of songs and other music that influenced or actually appear in Daring and Decorum: A Highwayman Novel. Most of them have to do with highwaymen, of course, but a couple are socialist/labor folk songs. I’ve also included some of the pieces Elizabeth and her friend Rebecca might have enjoyed.

First up is the Roches’ version of “The Road to Fairfax County.” I believe it was the first song I ever heard about a woman falling in love with a highwayman. After robbing her, this highwayman gives back all her money, which probably influenced me to have my highwayman return Elizabeth’s necklace, scaling a drain pipe to enter her bedchamber in the middle of the night. (When updating this post with a better version of this tune, I found out that Maggie Roche passed away since I first posted this. RIP, Maggie!)

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GawyW1BqmEI]

Wow, bleak, huh? What he gets for stopping to dally with a woman instead of keeping his wits about him, if you ask me.

I’m on Pinterest

It turns out writing a novel is death to blogging – at least for me. I don’t know how people like Chuck Wendig or Kameron Hurley do it (okay, Hurley’s latest post says she’s taking a break from blogging, but whatevs). I even kept up with blogging better when I was working on my massive Skyrim tome. But the novel’s almost done, and I’ll soon be looking for beta readers.

To give a clue about the novel’s subject and period, here’s my new Pinterest board. I really just joined to be able to view these historical objects on Pinterest, but soon I was pinning like a madman.

If this piques your interest and you’d like to be a beta reader, leave a comment, or email me at lahogue AT gmail DOT com. Maybe I should have a contest to see who can come closest to guessing the novel’s subject and plot. You can leave your suggestions for that in the comments too.