The winner is……….
ANDREAW
Andrea wins an autographed copy of SCANDAL’S DAUGHTER from our guest blogger, Christine Wells.
Congratulations, Andrea!
Contact us at riskies@yahoo.com
and tell us where to send your prize.
The winner is……….
ANDREAW
Andrea wins an autographed copy of SCANDAL’S DAUGHTER from our guest blogger, Christine Wells.
Congratulations, Andrea!
Contact us at riskies@yahoo.com
and tell us where to send your prize.
I know Elena is going to talk about Beach Reads this week. I haven’t been near a beach and I do have the reputation as the World’s Worst Read Romance Writer, (nice alliteration) but I thought I’d let you peek in on the books I’ve been opening this week.
My treat for finishing the manuscript (new title ideas: The Scandal Seeker, Unbidden Scandal, Courting Scandal, A Certain Scandal–see a pattern?) was to pick up the Wellington biography that I won at the Beau Monde Conference tea. I was enjoying it a lot and he was well into Spain when it was time for my trip to Williamsburg with Amanda.
When Amanda and I were not looking at historical items and recreations, we bought books, and it is a bit hard to say which took up more time…. Anyway, the books totally distracted me from Wellington. Then we met with Deb Marlowe and I became even more distracted by our exciting anthology idea (stay tuned…)and when I got home I started reading some books that would help with that idea like Broken Lives by Lawrence Stone, Sex in Georgian England by A.D. Harvey. (Tantalizing, aren’t they?) I read the appropriate parts of each of those books.
But since I really must be about the business of developing a new story idea and a proposal for Harlequin/Mills & Boon, I’ve been leafing through Beloved Emma by Flora Fraser (wonderful book!) and The Wheatley Diary edited by Christopher Hibbert.
This all sounds so lofty and impressive, but the real distractions have been Janet’s The Rules of Gentility and Amanda’s A Notorious Woman, both of which I purchased on my trip. I snagged the last copy of Rules of Gentility in the College of William and Mary Bookshop in Williamsburg, and Amanda’s A Notorious Woman at the Walmart near home (where we went to see if it was on the shelf).
If you have not yet purchased these books, HURRY! (Especially Amanda’s which will only stay on bookstore shelves this month). Amanda’s opening is sooooo intriguing, and Janet’s book is over-and-above charming and witty. Both books are on my nightstand, warring with the need to read my research books!
What glorious problems I’m having!
What is on YOUR nightstand?
Any good research books to share, ones I may not have purchased yet? (I just bought The Girl in Rose by Peter Hobday, about Haydn’s last love. I came across it while writing this blog!)
1) Tell us about Scandal’s Daughter! What inspired this book?
First of all, thank you ladies for having me on Risky Regencies. I love this blog! To answer your question, in Scandal’s Daughter, Sebastian, Earl of Carleton, promises his dying godfather he will find a husband for his childhood friend in three months or marry her himself. Sebastian quickly becomes the most determined matchmaker in England.
Gemma is the daughter of a notorious femme fatale. She doesn’t believe any respectable man will marry her, so she chooses to run her grandfather’s estate rather than enter the matrimonial mart. Her entire identity is bound up in being the honorary Squire. But her grandfather wants her married and provided for before he dies and he hires a land agent to take over Gemma’s duties. She desperately wants to regain her position on the estate, but in the meantime, Sebastian comes back into her life and she’s torn. I think what inspired me to write this book, though I didn’t know it at the time, was a similar upheaval in my own life. I recognized at the start of my marriage that I couldn’t continue as a corporate lawyer working crazy hours and bring up my children the way I wanted. Thus, a career as a writer was born! But so much of my identity was bound up in my career as a lawyer, it was a real struggle for me to come to terms with not having that any more. I learned that it’s who you are inside, not what you do, that counts. And I hope that’s what my heroine learns along the way, too.
2) We’ve heard you’re a great researcher! Were there any challenges in researching for this book? Any new or suprising historical facts you discovered?
Oh, where did you hear that? LOL Most of my research never makes it into a book. I try very hard to get the details right and I love delving into etymology–the history of words. All sorts of things came up in Scandal’s Daughter. For instance, I intended at first to base my heroine’s mother on Jane Digby, an intrepid Lady of Quality who never really fitted into London Society and ended up running away, eventually marrying a Bedouin prince. So I read about her fascinating life, but then I decided I wanted this wonderful character on stage, so I brought Sybil back from her travels (witha toy-boy in tow!) and she plays a significant role in the book. And there are always a myriad small details, like whether Japanese porcelain had entered England at the time my book was set, to the history of medieval stained glass.
3) What are some of your favorite sources?
Online, I love the Georgian Index http://www.georgianindex.net/fd/index.html#TOPand I use the UK National Trust site a lot to scope out locations:http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-findaplace.htm I have a good library of reference books which I’m adding to all the time. One I absolutely love is ‘Regency Style’ by Steven Parissien, which my wonderful writer friend Anna Campbell gave me. It’s visually stunning, and goes through a Regency house, item by item. It has sections devoted to staircases and wallpaper and bathrooms, so it’s incredibly useful. I regularly use Debrett’s ‘The Stately Homes of Britain’ and Carolly Erickson’s ‘Our Tempestuous Day’. I always read the background on the year in which my book is set in OTD before I begin, so I’m aware of any political or social issues that might affect my characters as the story unfolds.Still, there’s never enough time for research!
4) Tell us what’s “risky” or different from the norm about this book!
Gemma and Sebastian actually discuss the possibility of pregnancy before they make love the first time. And Gemma uses contraception, so I thought that was pretty risky! I’d seen so many romances where the couple fall into bed with no thought for the consequences that I wanted to do something different. I was worried an editor might want me to take it out, but my editor is very cool and didn’t even mention it. However, I don’t mean to criticize books where the heroine is swept away by passion. Of course, it happened all the time! I just relate a lot more to someone who does worry about the consequences and takes care of them as far as she can, given the circumstances and the era. It wouldn’t work in every book, but the discussion actually heightened the conflict in Scandal’s Daughter, so I felt justified putting it in.
5) What is it about the Regency that attracts you,makes you want to set your books in it?
Undoubtedly, it’s the wit. I’ve always loved that dry English sense of humour, the banter between hero and heroine that works so well in the Regency setting. And I love the subtext–all the things the characters can’t say but they can imply a great deal by their actions and what they do say,which is always fun for a writer.
6) What’s it like living in Australia? Is there a large romance community there?
I love Australia. I’m absolutely passionate about our wonderful lifestyle. I’m a real beach girl, so it’s great to be an hour’s drive from some of the best beaches in the world. The romance community here is not large by US standards, but the romance writing community is incredibly tight and supportive. There’s no spite or overt jealousy (or if there is, I’ve never come across it). I think it’s a lot to do with our veteran members, who are endlessly patient with newcomers and do so much to assist fledgling writerswith their careers. Authors like Anne Gracie and Trish Morey set the tone,and I’m very grateful for that.
7) Tell us what’s next for you!
My next book is currently scheduled for September 2008. It’s another Regency-set historical, about a duke who accidentally steals a lady’s erotic diary. It’s set against a background of political upheaval, when Liverpool declared a state of emergency and people were being locked up without trial for sedition. My heroine’s brother is a country vicar thrown in jail for aiding suspected arsonists. She threatens to expose government secrets by publishing her diary if the authorities don’t release him. My hero, the duke, steals what he thinks is that diary, only it turns out to contain the heroine’s secret erotic fantasies. I had a lot of fun with that one!
Be sure and comment on Christine’s post for a chance to win an autographed copy of Scandal’s Daughter! Winner will be announced Monday…
“. . . he understood that the makers of sublime art were not necessarily sublime themselves. And it was not necessary that they be, he told himself.”
I’m on vacation at the Jersey Shore–and on dial-up, so excuse the lack of pictures–and read a book by an author whose online persona is unpleasant, but her books are good. I can, in the words of Henry Rollins and Black Flag, Rise Above. Which got me to thinking–how far is it to go for an unlikeable person to write a pleasant personality?
I mean, stories abound of how rotten George Bernard Shaw, Mark Twain, Evelyn Waugh, A.A. Milne (poor Christopher Robin!) all were; we know Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Dorothy Parker weren’t exactly the nicest folks.
I, of course, am extremely nice–to a fault, if I do say so myself (although I have a biting wit if your clothing is inappropriate, Ms. Mutton)–and I am not certain I could write a very mean person. I do know I am writing an Alpha Hero whose first instincts are to do everything exactly the opposite of the way I would do them, which is how I am figuring out what he is to do.
When questioned, every author will say ‘it’s fiction!,’ which of course is especially important when you’re James Ellroy or Tess Gerritsen. But if you know the author is not a nice person, does that affect your reading of his or her work? How about if they’re too nice?
Me, I prefer keeping a Kantian distance from my authors; I don’t want to know if they had a drinking problem, or hated their mother, or were mean to their siblings. I want to feel their art regardless of their personal lives, react and respond to the work purely as it stands. How about you? Are there authors you cannot read because you know they were horrendous people?
PS: I have to say I still love watching Charlton Heston and his Chest in Omega Man, despite what I know about his politics, which are the polar opposite of mine. Does that make me shallow, or open-minded?
Usually when I’m looking for something to blog about (if I’m not feeling in a particularly opinionated mood) I go to such sources as Chambers Book of Days (great for obscure saints and oddities) or History UK, from which I learned that yesterday was the anniversary of the Battle of Bosworth (the defeat of Richard III and the beginning of the Tudors) and today is the anniversary of the London blitz in World War II.
But this day in 1812 was the day most of the inhabitants of Washington DC fled the city. Why? The British were coming and tomorrow marks the anniversary of one of the most humiliating defeats in American history, the Battle of Bladensburg. Earlier that year America declared war on Britain, following Britain’s efforts to restrict trade with the French. Other grievances included the Brits’ high-handed press-ganging of Americans into the navy and British support for native Americans against American settlers. In August of 1812 the British landed at Baltimore and marched south toward Washington.
Dolley Madison, the first lady, was one of the panicked residents who fled the city, but she had the foresight to take with her several of the valuables from the White House, including the portrait above of George Washington.
And sure enough, the British did march on Washington after the battle the next day, meeting with very little resistance. After dining at the White House on the presidential silver and glassware, they set fire to it and to the rest of the city.
So my question to you is this: I hope you’ll never have to grab your possessions and flee your home, but if you did, what would you take with you?
How to instruct your servants on moving valuable possessions and stop them running from the enemy–just one of the informative topics covered in the Riskies newsletter. Subscribe at riskies@yahoo.com with NEWSLETTER in the subject line.