Every day I don’t write I go a little crazy. I make excuses, that I’m dealing with more important things like my children’s health and well-being or major or minor household catastrophes, but something inside me screams. If I ignore it the screams build up in the pit of my stomach and somewhere between my shoulderblades. It gets physical.

Summers can be tough on the mommy writer. This one has been no exception. For the first month or so I did quite well. Despite the flood, heat waves and a bug bite that gave me the hives, between play dates and errands, I still managed to sit down and write for at least an hour every day. I have about 50 pages of rough draft on one story and about 2/3 of a detailed outline for another to show for it.

But for the past three weeks or so, writing has been derailed by vacation, house guests, back to school preparations and threatened cuts to the local Kopernik Observatory’s educational programs, necessitating much letter-writing to the controlling museum’s board members and local politicians.

Now I have lost that tenuous connection with my characters and my stories and I am rusty as – as – well, so rusty I can’t even think of a decent simile.

My friend Therese Walsh has been going through something similar and blogged about it at Writer Unboxed. She and I are suffering from the same malaise–shall we call it Summer Writing Syndrome (SWS)?

The problem with SWS is it’s hard to recover, even once salvation arrives, as it did this morning, in the form of a schoolbus. Now there are no more excuses. The pressure’s on to produce but the creative muscles are creaky.

At least I’ve been here, done that already. To come back from a break in the writing, I know I need to cut through the nonsense. No self-flagellation about how little I accomplished this summer. No whining about being rusty–some sludge has to come out of the pipe before the good stuff. No prima donna melodrama. Just back to work. Back to sanity.

I’ve brewed my pot of half-decaf. The candle is lit. Ravel is coming from the CD player.

Wish me luck!

Elena
LADY DEARING’S MASQUERADE, RT Reviewers’ Choice, Best Regency Romance of 2005
www.elenagreene.com

In three weeks — on Tuesday, September 26 — I’ll be holding a contest here, with great prizes. So, do you want to hear about the contest first, or the prizes?

The prizes? Okay!

There will be at least two winners, and they will have a variety of prizes to choose from. The first winner will get to choose any of these prizes she or he wishes — and the second will choose from the remaining prizes. (If there are a lot of entrants, I’ll have a third winner too!)

PRIZE A: PRIDE & PREJUDICE “FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION” Book. This is an 11″ by 9″ softcover book with approximately 80 pages of color photos of last year’s film of “Pride and Prejudice.” This was the book given to Academy members to convince them to nominate everyone who worked on the film, and I suspect it’s pretty rare. As well as laudatory critical quotes, it has lots of neat bits: quotes from the production designer on her aims, from Keira Knightley on her thoughts about taking the roles, several excerpts from the script, costume designs, a picture of Sleeveless Hussy (Miss Bingley) in her sleeveless dress, and a lot more. And yes, all you Matthew MacFadyen fans — there are very nice pics of him in it. (The picture at the top of this post is the cover.)

PRIZE B: BATH MUSEUM OF COSTUME & ASSEMBLY ROOMS souvenir guidebook. This 8″ by 11 1/2″ “Authorised Guide” has 48 pages of pictures of the Assembly Rooms in Bath, descriptions of their history, and photos and explanation of the famous Costume Museum Collections there, accompanied by period illustrations.

PRIZE C: An Advanced Reading Copy of Stephanie Barron’s sixth Jane Austen mystery, JANE AND THE PRISONER OF WOOL HOUSE, which came out in 2001.

PRIZE D: Hardback copy of Steven Parissien’s GEORGE IV: INSPIRATION OF THE REGENCY. Four hundred pages about the Prince Regent himself, including sixteen black-and-white plates, this book was called “Charming, intelligent, imaginitive, witty” by the Sunday Times.

PRIZE E: Any four of the following paperbacks: Georgette Heyer’s THE MASQUERADERS; Georgette Heyer’s SYLVESTER; Carla Kelly’s SUMMER CAMPAIGN;
Carla Kelly’s MISS CHARTLEY’S GUIDED TOUR; Carla Kelly’s LIBBY’S LONDON MERCHANT; Catherine Fellows’s THE LOVE MATCH; Laura Kinsale’s FOR MY LADY’S HEART (It’s Medieval, not Regency, but it’s a Kinsale!); and Patricia Wrede’s MAIRELON THE MAGICIAN (which is fantasy set during the Regency.) Information about the condition or edition of any of the above available on request, beginning next week (September 12). (Some have well-creased spines. Some don’t.)

Those are the prizes. Now — for the contest.

Because my book (MY LADY GAMESTER) is still in print, but may not be for long, I’m making this contest all about it! To enter, you will need to read MY LADY GAMESTER (author: Cara King) by Tuesday, September 26. (I will not ask how you obtain it — new, used, library, friend — but I will mention that it is still available new through Amazon and similar outlets.)

Then on Tuesday, September 26, there will be a discussion about the book here, on the Risky Regencies blog. If you leave a comment that makes any kind of sense and shows you’ve actually read the book, your name will be entered two times in the drawing. For each further sensible comment, you will have one more entry. (Please note: you don’t have to say nice things about the book. Honest discussion is what is sought.) Then names will be drawn at random — first name drawn gets first choice from prizes A – E, and second name gets second choice. (If there are a lot of comments, I’ll have a third winner as well.)

You can start placing comments at 12 a.m. Pacific Time (3 a.m. Eastern Time, 8 a.m. GMT) the morning of Tuesday, September 26, and place them as late as noon Pacific time (3 p.m. Eastern Time, 8 p.m. GMT) the following day, Wednesday, September 27, 2006.

And, yes — I will mail these prizes anywhere in the world (except for the GEORGE IV book, which is just too heavy). So no matter where you’re living, you’re eligible.

If you have any questions about the contest, ask them here — but please be patient about the reply. I’m off to England today to see six plays in six days — including five of Shakespeare’s most rarely performed plays — so I’ll be offline much of the next week. (The plays, if anyone’s interested, are the three Henry VI plays [all in one day!], King John, and Troilus and Cressida. Plus the new Stoppard.)

So: why should you enter? (a) You may win great prizes; (b) If this contest gets a lot of comments, we’ll probably have other similar contests in the future, with even more great prizes; (c) You might just enjoy reading the book; and (d) Even if you don’t, it should be fun explaining why not to everyone else who’s read it!

So, one final point… The answer to the question “Is a contest in which an author forces entrants to talk about her book a sign of (a) runaway egomania, or (b) rampant insecurity?” is still being debated in Parliament.

Cara
Cara King — author of MY LADY GAMESTER
Booksellers’ Best Award for Best Regency of 2005

For fun, I’m reading Ian Kelly’s Beau Brummell: The Ultimate Man of Style (Free Press, 2006) and have discovered a couple of interesting facts. Or at least things I did not know.

According to Kelly, tailors during Brummell’s heyday tended to specialize. Gronow had said Brummell favored Weston as his tailor, but Mr. Kelly’s research found that Brummell frequented several tailors. The primary ones were Schweitzer and Davidson on Cork Street, Johnathan Meyer on Conduit Street, and Weston, the only one British born. He favored different tailors for different items of clothing: Weston primarily for waistcoats; Schweitzer and Davidson for his coats and greatcoats; Johnathan Meyer for the forerunner of our modern trousers that Brummell pioneered.

Kelly states that Brummell “wore slim-cut trousers or ‘pantaloons’ that flattered his famously long-legged frame. For daywear these were made of leather, mercerized cotton, or nankeen and plain cotton in summer. Evening wear necessitated black, according to the new asthetic, and Brumell wore sheer black silk jersey, made up as breeches for Carlton House or the theatre, and as pantaloons for the clubs.”

I guess that answers my question of a couple of weeks ago about what color my hero’s breeches should be.

Brummell, like so many other gentlemen, purchased his hats from Lock & Co. The shop still exists today and in it you can actually see Wellington’s and Nelson’s famous hats.

Here is an image attributed to Brummell, but I am not at all certain it is the Beau. What do you think?

I much prefer this image.

James Purefoy as Brummell!
The BBC says: “The Taunton-born actor is heading a star cast in BBC FOUR’s Beau Brummell, a new drama at the centre of the channel’s The Century That Made Us season focussing on the 18th century, to be screened on Monday 19 June, 2006.”

Oh, don’t you wish they would air all the shows in the US???
What do you think about James Purefoy as Brummell? He certainly wears the clothes well!

One more important fact about Brummell.
Kelly could find no evidence that Brummell wore underwear.

Cheers!
Diane

Thanks to everyone for the hilarious responses to my dating-gone-bad post! Keira and Lois, send me your snail mail addresses (to: Amccabe7551@yahoo.com) and I will get some books sent out to you.

On Sunday, look for an interview from Candice Hern! We’ll be talking about her new “Merry Widows” series, history, covers, and her fabulous collections of Regency antiques. (She’ll also be giving away a copy of In the Thrill of the Night!)

We welcome–or rather, welcome back, since she’s a frequent visitor to the Riskies–Pam Rosenthal, acclaimed author of Almost a Gentleman and The Bookseller’s Daughter, whose next book THE SLIGHTEST PROVOCATION comes out this week.

Enter your comment or question for Pam (an intelligent, relevant one, please!) by Sunday, September 10 for a chance to win an autographed copy of The Slightest Provocation (winner to be chosen by the Riskies).

Pam Rosenthal’s writing is extraordinary. Fans of Laura Kinsale and Julia Ross will adore Rosenthal’s ability to humanize her characters–to render their emotions and reactions realistic to a fault, while maintaining a warmth that makes them sympathetic. Kit and Mary breathe. Louisa White, Fresh Fiction

Thoroughly grounded in history and threaded through with breathtaking sensuality, this intelligent, well-crafted romance takes readers on a fascinating journey and will appeal to those who appreciate a bit more history with an erotic, literary touch. Library Journal

Rosenthal crafts a tantalizing tale about a fiery love/hate relationship that defies the boundaries of love. Her strong characters’ fierce desires will leave readers panting. FOUR STARS Kathe Robin, Romantic Times

Pam, congratulations on the great reviews. Tell us what The Slightest Provocation is about.
It’s about a pair of lovers who eloped and then separated, when they were too young and feckless to know how to handle their youth, passions, and conflicting values. Since then, Mary has lived an independent life among poets and reformers, while Kit has learned discipline and responsibility in the army. Now that the war with Napoleon is over, they find themselves thrust back together.
The thrusting part (no surprise) works quite as well as it ever did. But the two of them still can’t agree on much else, especially disagreeing about the current political situation. The turning point is their discovery of a secret government plot, which forces them to question what’s truly important and to rethink their places in the world and with each other. The government plot really happened, by the way, and I find it quite fascinating.
So it’s about the varieties of power–erotic and otherwise. And also about love and the effects of time (inevitable, I suppose, since I’m not getting any younger myself).

What inspired you to write it?
First off, there was my curiosity–the urge that I share with you Riskies, to peek beyond the gates of the landed estate or the boundaries of Mayfair and St. James, to see what else was going on. And what I found, in the years after 1815, was a British Home Office most vexed by the parliamentary reform societies springing up throughout the country. The government responded to the situation by suspending habeas corpus, limiting the right to assemble, and sending a shady agent provocateur to foment rebellion and thus discredit the reformers. You can see it happening, if you read the Home Office correspondence in the British National Archives.
Added to which there’s my continuing interest, as an erotic writer, with point of view and the power of looking–which in this case led to a fascination with espionage. What’s wonderful to me is that while many things changed in the writing of this book, the founding image remains just as I first conceived it: an Englishman hidden in shadow, watching an Englishwoman, rather the worse for a hard day of travel, stepping out of a coach into an inn yard at Calais. I wondered if this was an image of the man’s power as a viewer, or of his powerlessness to stop looking. I was enthralled by the ambiguity, and what it implied for the volatility of an erotic relationship. And I think I must have gotten something of my obsession across, though, because an early reviewer (Historical Romance Writers–read the full review here) has said that she felt like a voyeur at Mary and Kit’s clandestine meetings.

Describe the challenge of using all that historical actuality, as you call it.
Whew! Well, besides getting it all right, you mean? (I’m adding an errata section to my web page, to deal with my errors as they’re revealed, by the way). But the ongoing problem was that I committed to following the true day-to-day chronology of events. Which meant I had to engineer the unfolding of the erotic connection to make sense in the context of Mary and Kit’s discoveries and varying interpretations. Since pacing is so critical in erotic writing, this set some serious constraints on what I could do. On the other hand, constraint, secrecy, and the nuances of understanding can be very sexy. One makes do.

Tell us a bit about the historical background/research you did.
Well, there were three parts to it. The early, difficult part was simply to unravel an intrigue that might have been hatched by Scooter Libbey, only in 1817. My husband Michael did yeoman labor in helping me put the pieces together, trucking home books from several libraries, finding the references to the Home Office documents, getting us permits to use the British Library and National Archives… but I did write the book, I promise.

The fun part was going to the Derbyshire countryside, where the agent provocateur made the most trouble–and where Mary and Kit grew up together. We spent a week tramping through fields and forests (my couple has lots of clandestine forest meetings)–I know, it’s a dirty job but someone has to do it. It’s a lovely area; we stayed at the village of Youlgrave (left), which is very near Chatsworth, and I highly recommend it. We got lost on our way to Pentrich, some twenty miles away, where some of the events would have happened. Which incident became story fodder–well, have you ever met a married couple who didn’t quarrel under such circumstances, especially if the guy refuses to ask directions?
But in some ways the most thrilling part was spent in the British Library and especially the National Archives, where we saw the correspondence between the Home Office, its agents and the magistrates. We were scared that we wouldn’t be able to decipher the old handwriting (though we didn’t admit that to each other until we were seated in front of the microfiche machines). But we could–not every word, but lots. And there it was, Lord Sidmouth, the Home Office Secretary, telling the magistrates not to arrest the provocateur. “A smoking gun,” Michael whispered.

How does this book take risks?
I don’t tell the erotic love story through a completely straightforward chronology. Kit and Mary’s earlier relationship–childhood, impetuous adolescence, elopement, early marriage, indiscretions, and betrayals–are rendered through memory fragments, breaking the surface of consciousness in that weird way that memory has. Which means that sometimes an incident will be told twice, from he says/she says contrasting points of view, and that events aren’t always recounted in chronological order. So I was concerned that I was asking a lot of my readers, to put it all together–though I do think there’s a coherent, compelling story to be found (and one that demands some compassion: this is a pair of lovers who hurt each other deeply when they were young and out of control). On the other hand, I’m a firm believer that a book comes alive through a reader’s active involvement in it. And since the story the reader has to piece together is a sexy, passionate one, I hoped that would be a motivation, and ultimately its own reward. And I think I might have pulled it off.