I didn't bother to think about genre as I was writing my current story. I didn't think at the time I should focus on an audience but rather should write the story for myself. I had thought I was a comfortable fit between romance and HF, but now I'm not sure whether I should focus on agents looking for romance or HF. I'm giving a brief synopsis so that you might be able to help me.
Set in Dublin 1912.Nineteen year old Aisling lives in tenement housing after her mother died and her father ran away with his mistress. Alone and afraid in her new found poverty, having lived a comfortable middle-class life and still grieving for her mother she finds employment as an actress in W.B. Yeats' theatre - singing and dancing being skills she learnt at school. Always feeling like an outsider and shocked at the prostitution and poverty amongst the working-class and caught in the short and shaky future of an acting career, she makes an easy target for the vindictive and insecure actress Katie, who herself fears that prostitution may be her future if she were dropped from the company.
The nastiness of Katie only increases when Yeats wishes to stage a Greek play, The King Oedipus, and enter into a race to stage it with Britain in an effort to promote Irish sovereignty as Aisling is singled out to voice the lines of the play as they're being translated. She was chosen by a young scholar, James, from Trinity University who has fallen in love with her instantly, which causes Katie's insults to shift from commenting on Aisling's frigidity to making her out to be a slut. James is shy and jittery towards Aisling and is always caught staring at her; his weak nature and behaviour, which she sees as sordid, puts her on her guard with him.
Meanwhile, another man has moved in below her in her housing; charming, handsome, confident and determined, she can't help but be attracted to his outgoing and unabashed nature which makes her yearn for the strong and confident love of her mother. He arranges several dates with her and then, arousing her sexual desires that have never been fully realised by her, he effectively rapes her. But he manipulates her feelings and her actions in a way which only increases the affections she has for him and the way she begins to see him as a replacement for her mother's love.
James, in the meantime, keeps telling her how much he loves her with all the poetic language he can muster, but it only exasperates her with his shy and timid nature. Yet the lines he is translating for the play that she voices on the stage, give her a feeling of strength as she identifies with Oedipus in his suffering and his courage to overcome it and not being able to perceive things as they are. Andrew, however, causes her further problems when his fiancee appears at Aisling's door and tries to fight her causing Aisling to feel like the mistress of her father that gave her mother so much grief.
Andrew's hold on her begins to lessen, and she begins to see things as they are when Katie is groped by the male actor playing Oedipus. With just days to go before the performance, Yeats kicks the actor out of the theatre and Aisling is the only one who can replace him - knowing Oedipus' lines from voicing them. Katie and Aisling make up and cause her to reflect on Andrew and the lines of the play James had written - she realises they were written for her. That James had known her well enough to craft those lines and seen the strength within her.
The play is cancelled and Aisling will never play Oedipus once Britain stages the play early; and outside the theatre Andrew appears and there is a clash with James. Aisling tells him what she really sees in him. And then there's a happy ending with James.
Set in Dublin 1912.Nineteen year old Aisling lives in tenement housing after her mother died and her father ran away with his mistress. Alone and afraid in her new found poverty, having lived a comfortable middle-class life and still grieving for her mother she finds employment as an actress in W.B. Yeats' theatre - singing and dancing being skills she learnt at school. Always feeling like an outsider and shocked at the prostitution and poverty amongst the working-class and caught in the short and shaky future of an acting career, she makes an easy target for the vindictive and insecure actress Katie, who herself fears that prostitution may be her future if she were dropped from the company.
The nastiness of Katie only increases when Yeats wishes to stage a Greek play, The King Oedipus, and enter into a race to stage it with Britain in an effort to promote Irish sovereignty as Aisling is singled out to voice the lines of the play as they're being translated. She was chosen by a young scholar, James, from Trinity University who has fallen in love with her instantly, which causes Katie's insults to shift from commenting on Aisling's frigidity to making her out to be a slut. James is shy and jittery towards Aisling and is always caught staring at her; his weak nature and behaviour, which she sees as sordid, puts her on her guard with him.
Meanwhile, another man has moved in below her in her housing; charming, handsome, confident and determined, she can't help but be attracted to his outgoing and unabashed nature which makes her yearn for the strong and confident love of her mother. He arranges several dates with her and then, arousing her sexual desires that have never been fully realised by her, he effectively rapes her. But he manipulates her feelings and her actions in a way which only increases the affections she has for him and the way she begins to see him as a replacement for her mother's love.
James, in the meantime, keeps telling her how much he loves her with all the poetic language he can muster, but it only exasperates her with his shy and timid nature. Yet the lines he is translating for the play that she voices on the stage, give her a feeling of strength as she identifies with Oedipus in his suffering and his courage to overcome it and not being able to perceive things as they are. Andrew, however, causes her further problems when his fiancee appears at Aisling's door and tries to fight her causing Aisling to feel like the mistress of her father that gave her mother so much grief.
Andrew's hold on her begins to lessen, and she begins to see things as they are when Katie is groped by the male actor playing Oedipus. With just days to go before the performance, Yeats kicks the actor out of the theatre and Aisling is the only one who can replace him - knowing Oedipus' lines from voicing them. Katie and Aisling make up and cause her to reflect on Andrew and the lines of the play James had written - she realises they were written for her. That James had known her well enough to craft those lines and seen the strength within her.
The play is cancelled and Aisling will never play Oedipus once Britain stages the play early; and outside the theatre Andrew appears and there is a clash with James. Aisling tells him what she really sees in him. And then there's a happy ending with James.
