Review: The Crimson Hour by Julie Tetel Andersen #JulieTetelBooks

St. Louis · San Francisco · Bucharest · Hong Kong

Eloise Popescu has one last entry to make in her screw-up-alog, and it's a doozy: she has just walked into the cross-fire of warring Chinese mafia families and into the path of Hanes Reynolds whose career has just been ruined by those same families. As Eloise and Hanes reluctantly unite forces to escape the clans, they must learn to trust one another … or repeat the fatal mistakes they made the last time they were together in 19th-century Hong Kong.

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Q&A with Author, Linguist 
Julie Tetel Andresen

When did you develop a passion for linguistics?

Ever since I was about five years old. I remember lying in bed at night in the room I shared with my older sister, making up new words that I would teach her. When I discovered there were other languages in the world, with the words already made up, I couldn’t get enough. I didn’t know, however, that there was such a thing as a discipline of linguistics until I was working on my Masters in French. After that I was hooked.

How do you bridge your career as a romance writer with your life as a professional linguist and academic?

The two activities wrap around another almost every day in my life, and this has been the case for the last twenty years or more. Today I’m at a resort on the Black Sea in Bulgaria. My friends are on the beach. I can’t tan, since I have redhead skin and was told by a dermatologist years ago to stay out of the sun. I’m happy enough, however, because I’m on the balcony of my room overlooking the sea, and working on the some of the early chapters of the forthcoming Wiley-Blackwell book, Languages of the World, skyping with my co-author, Phillip Carter. When I take a break from this, I’ll probably download a werewolf story or a panther shape-shifting story. I got into these subgenres in the past few months. At the moment, I can’t get enough of them.

How do your two writing careers strengthen each other?

All good writing is story telling, and this applies to academic writing, as well. I love reading about language, and the question is always, “What story is this linguist telling me?” I am currently reading The Last Speakers by David K. Harrison, and it’s a wonderful world tour of the stories of speakers of endangered languages. My favorite linguist may well be Stephen Levinson. Although it might not seem like his Space in Language and Cognition would make for a gripping story, I read the book (several times, actually), enthralled by the world Levinson was opening to me. Following a good (academic) argument is like reading a well-plotted novel.

I think it was Fred Astaire who said: “If I don’t dance for one day, I feel it. If I don’t dance two days in a row, the audience will feel it. If I don’t dance three days in a row, I should find another job.” Having two writing careers keeps me in writing shape. It’s cross training. Yoga and Pilates.

You have lived and traveled all over the world – to France, Germany, Vietnam, Romania, Greece, and Brazil just to name a few places. How did this influence your writing?

I’ve always loved historical romances, but I began my time-slip series when I realized I wanted to write about the places I’m visiting in the here and now. I love it when a place is a kind of character in a novel, ever-present and shaping events. I also happen to love botanical gardens and the tropics, so I find myself gravitating toward southern latitudes and the equator, where everything is lush. When I write a story and find I need to check out the details of a place I’m using as a setting, I can easily persuade myself I need to revisit the location in order to make sure I have the details right. While writing The Emerald Hour, I made sure to revisit the spectacular Jardim Botânico in Rio. In fact, it would have been irresponsible of me not to revisit the location.

How do you see language changing?

For one thing, it’s always changing! I wrote a short essay that’s on my website for the Duke Magazine about where English will be in 25 years, where I offer a few ideas. Linguistics isn’t a precisely predictive science where I can say that X grammatical change is certain to happen. However, since William Labov’s groundbreaking work in sociolinguistics, linguists are able to track language change in progress. Just sticking to phonetic matters, Labov is currently tracking the Northern Cities Shift and the Southern Cities Shift in North American English. As for lexical and grammatical matters, there is no doubt that platforms such as Facebook and Twitter compel their users to create new and abbreviated forms that will no doubt get woven into the spoken language. People are already speaking abbreves, and LOL has morphed into the word lawl.

One of the more interesting phenomena created by social media is that previously unwritten forms of a language (Arabic dialects, for instance) are now becoming written forms of communication. Before these new media, in the case of Arabic, only Modern Standard Arabic functioned (and still functions) as the written standard, while the local dialects were written in very limited circumstances, if at all. Now there is an explosion of writing in the local dialects, as people communicate directly among themselves.

How many languages do you speak? Which one do you prefer and why?

I’m not a polygot. I’ve studied an array of languages – French, German, Arabic, Japanese, Vietnamese, Romanian – sometimes just to get a sense of how the particular language is put together, but I know true polygots, and I’m not one of them. I make zero claim, for instance, to knowing anything but the most superficial facts about Arabic or Japanese. At the moment I am immersed in Romanian. If I’m not in the language at the moment, I can’t say anything about it. The language I prefer is the one I am in in the moment. I do know that I love Vietnamese enough to want to spend an entire year there, in a language school. The six months I spent there last year was not enough.

Do you find it easier to write or speak in a foreign language?

For me, writing is always the easiest thing to do! When I was in Vietnam, I kept coming to class with essays. The teachers wondered at first why I was doing this, because they hadn’t assigned them. One of the first questions one of my teachers asked was, “How long did it take you to write this?” I would usually work on one for a couple of hours a day for maybe a day or two, so I could sleep on things, and then go back and see what I wanted to say. I would tell my teacher I spent maybe five, six, or seven hours an essay. She would shake her head and say it would take her over a week to write something like this in English. And her English was way better than my Vietnamese. I think most people think speaking is easier than writing. For me, it’s the opposite.

It didn’t really even occur to me that I have routinely written in a language I am studying until a little over six months ago. It simply seemed like a natural thing to do as a writer, like a pianist warming up by playing arpeggios. As I was putting my website together, I thought, Well, if I’m putting together all my writing, I may as well include all my writing. I’ve always written my foreign language essays for restricted audiences, either a small group of academics interested in a particular question or for an audience of one, namely my language teacher. They’re intimate pieces. I finally put them on my website, because I thought maybe other people would enjoy them as well.

Your collection of books explores so many points in history. Is there one era that has a special place in your heart?

This is a choosing-among-children question, only slightly less difficult to answer than, “What’s the favorite book you’ve written?” All historical periods are fascinating. Especially the present one, since I’m living in it.

How was your approach to writing your time-slip series different than your historical and Regency pieces?

Not much different. I felt my time-slip series explores and expands my sense of the boundaries of the romance. I got my start with Regencies, which to me are like classic Hollywood romanticomedies, and who doesn’t like a Frank Capra screwball comedy? Everything I’ve written from that point on has been an extension of the form of the romanticomedy, even if the tone is dark.

We can only assume you never stop writing. What can readers expect from you next?

I yielded to trend and just wrote a BDSM-inspired novella. Yikes! But I loved it. Not for everyone, of course, but nothing is. After the linguistics book, it’s back to another time-slip. (I think.) I plan a trip to Mongolia in 2014 and want to find a good 6-week program for learning the language – the basics, obviously, nothing for fluency. What will come out of that is anyone’s guess. I, for one, don’t have the faintest idea.

What readers are saying:

“I felt danger, adventure, romance, empathy, excitement, suspense, and surprise. I was so in touch with the characters that I found myself wanting to scream at them when they were in certain situations. As an avid reader, I am grateful to the author for opening up a new world to me. After years of Clancy, Ludlum, Grisham, King and others, I am excited to explore the world of romantic adventure!” – Reader review, Amazon.com

“Not ‘just’ a time travel, contemporary romance, historical fiction or suspense novel. The mystery, travel and adventure make it exciting, the historical aspects are well-researched and nicely done, the reincarnation aspects make it fascinating, and the romance is integral to the storyline.” – Reader review, Amazon.com

REVIEW

Once again, Andersen did an excellent job of whisking me off on an exciting travel adventure. 

This story was well-paced, with a new mix of intriguing characters, fascinating travel destinations and plenty of suspense and action. I'm still in awe of the magical way this story was woven. The unique way in which Andersen's Timeslip Series is written is pure brilliance because it really brings the reader into the story. 

I kept looking for the similarities between characters, by their actions and relationships, and I was absolutely delighted each time a puzzle piece fell into place. Although the past life story in The Crimson Hour wasn't as exciting and full of passion as the one in The Blue Hour, I still loved the historical aspects that brought it to life. Andersen's knowledge and thoroughness with which she created the people and places within this book drew me in and I felt like I was literally transported back in time.

One thing that really stood out for me was that the prose was more relaxed and flowed with such ease. I had a better time believing the modern day characters, because their actions and mannerisms were more realistic. This also allowed me to fully submerge myself in the lives of these characters from page one.

Even without the reincarnation angle, this book was enthralling. A murder mystery, chock-full of romance, secrets and lies, I just couldn't get enough. 

Find out more about The Timeslip Series.

Read Julie Tetel Andersen's short story, The Wedding Night, for FREE

OTHER BOOKS BY JULIE TETEL ANDERSEN

Romance

21st Century

Non-Fiction

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Julie Tetel Andresen’s seemingly disparate writing activities – fiction, non-fiction and essays in foreign languages – all arise from a unified sense of her writing self.

As a professional linguist, she loves language, while as a romance writer she loves the language of love; and when learning a foreign language, she loves nothing more than exploring the limits of her ability to express herself in that language on paper.

In her academic writing, she has long been devoted to exploring the history of linguistics, and this disciplinary exploration parallels her devotion to writing historical novels. In her most recent academic work “Linguistics and Evolution” (Cambridge 2014), she shows the ways that the history of linguistic theory and practice informs the current state of the discipline, and this sense of the past pressing on the present informs her time-slip series.

Her writing activities have always been entwined temporally. She wrote her first historical “My Lord Roland” while writing her PhD dissertation “Linguistic Crossroads of the Eighteenth Century,” and all her early academic articles were written mostly in French. Twenty novels and dozens of journal articles later, she wrote her Regency novella “French Lessons” while waiting for the 2012 autumn meeting of the Cambridge Press Syndicate to decide to issue her a contract for “Linguistics and Evolution.” At the same time, she happened to be in Ho Chi Minh City learning Vietnamese and happily writing her Vietnamese essays.

She firmly believes that one type of writing strengthens the others. Her historical novels have honed her craft of plotting and sub-plotting, while her time-slip series has given her the Kraft (in the German sense of the word 'power') to handle the long historical arc and multiple characters involved in “Linguistics and Evolution.” Her professional study of language, in turn, makes her sensitive to the vocabulary and rhythms of speech in other places and time periods; while writing in a foreign language – be it French, German, Romanian, or Vietnamese – is to her like the pianist warming up with scales and arpeggios or the yogini trying out a new asana. Can she get her leg behind her head in Romanian?

No? Well, then how about triangle pose? Can she get into full lotus in Vietnamese? Again, no? Let’s see about half-lotus.

Andresen grew up in Glenview, Ill. She holds a bachelor of arts degree from Duke University and a doctorate from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She has taught at Duke University for the past 20 years where she specializes in linguistics.

Find out more on Julie's WEBSITE.