CONGRATULATIONS
to
Sara Lindsey
who has won a copy of Nicola Cornick’s THE LAST RAKE IN LONDON
and
Gillian Layne
who has won a copy of Nicola Cornick’s UNMASKED.
Please email riskies@yahoo.com to claim your prizes.
The Riskies
CONGRATULATIONS
to
Sara Lindsey
who has won a copy of Nicola Cornick’s THE LAST RAKE IN LONDON
and
Gillian Layne
who has won a copy of Nicola Cornick’s UNMASKED.
Please email riskies@yahoo.com to claim your prizes.
The Riskies
What am I doing now that I turned in my book? Yes. In case you missed it, my work is no longer in progress but is DONE! I emailed it off to Mills & Boon on Thursday. Whoo hoo!
The good news is, I liked the final result. When I read through one last time, the book held together pretty well. It even has some surprises. Of course, my editor and her readers at M&B may see things differently, but it is out of my hands until revision time.
I’ve had a lot of other stuff that I’d put off to deal with, like getting my webmistress (the incomparable Emily Cotler and her team at Waxcreative Design) new material, including my new bookcover! Take a peek! There were a couple of other promotional things to take care of. Including one I almost forgot! On July 21 I’m going to be a guest at Rosa is for Romance, a blog for Italian and English-speaking readers who love romance.
I also loaded more CDs onto my ITunes, including my favorite CD of Strauss. The Blue Danube always makes me smile. I imagine my hero and heroine gazing at each other lovingly and then starting to dance with joy. Of course, The Blue Danube was written in 1867, but I imagine it anyway.
I also created a new bookmark. Back in June my husband bought me a new laptop (for our anniversary. It was easier than getting me flowers) and now I can use software to design my own bookmarks! I love my new computer. It’s pink.
And I had the great pleasure of realizing my clothes are too big. Most of my pants and jeans are TOO BIG!! I have been dieting but I haven’t lost that last 10 lbs I wanted to lose before RWA. Still, I went down a dress size! So I went into a flurry of trying on my clothes to see what fit and what didn’t and I ran out to Macys to buy some more things, including a pair of black pants with a light pinstripe marked down to $20 from $109! I also stopped in the lingerie dept and bought new…lingerie, including some Flexees so I can look 10 lbs thinner even if I’m not.
I think I am ready for RWA. I might be able to fit into this dress for the Beau Monde Soiree (Left)
But maybe not this one. (Right)
Hmmmm. Maybe I’ll run upstairs and try that light blue one on again…….
I can’t wait to see all of our Risky friends at RWA. Only a couple weeks to go!!
There is still time to enter my contest on my website. But if you want to read the Sneak Peek of Scandalizing the Ton you’d better hurry. It is going to disappear soon.
All this month the Wet Noodle Posse are giving RWA tips. So come visit. My topic posted today is Don’t Be Shy: RWA Survival Skills for the Very Very Bashful
First off, I am not sorry at all if I planted Kool & The Gang in your head with the title of this post. Welcome to my nightmare (yup, Alice Cooper).
Next, let me admit that today I have even less to say than usual. I have been reading a lot, and writing some, and that is all good. My son and I are in Minnesota visiting relatives, and it’s been a lovely time, the lack of stress meaning I’m less neurotic than normal. So I don’t have any bees buzzing in my bonnet, or ants in pants, or fly in ointment, or any other kind of insect issue.
I am gearing up for National, and I told Amanda recently I hadn’t even thought about what to pack. If I was one of our heroines, I’d probably be one of those governess-y types, the quiet, secretly witty ladies who would have only a few gowns, one good one to wear to dinner that would be way less lovely than all the other ladies, but the hero would only see my sparkling hazel eyes and the way my crooked tooth glinted in the candlelight.
But I’m not. So I have many decisions to make. Namely, what to wear.
Some men claim that women dress for other women, and perhaps that is so, but I dress for ME (which explains those glitter shirts, red snakeskin boots, Hello Kitty t-shirt and stretch jeans with the hole in the knee I wear), as well as women. And men. And anyone else who might see me and think, for a second, I’m as glamourous as I would like to be.
I will probably do my standard travel outfit of black separates, a few colorful pieces, and gowns from my grandmother’s collection. I have been wearing her clothes for several Nationals now, and probably have to repeat, but I am hoping no-one but me (and maybe Amanda) notices.
My biggest concern is that I not look muttony, as in ‘mutton dressed as lamb.’ I’m not so old I should be wearing one of those dowager’s purple turbans, but I’m too old to be rocking some clothes I love. I know that. Really.
Who doesn’t love a bad girl, or in romance-speak, a flawed heroine?
There was quite a lively discussion yesterday at Smart Bitches on favorite flawed heroines, following an article in The Guardian where Toni Jordan listed her top ten–a very odd list including Miss Haversham from Great Expectations. Not that many from romance, though, and I’m wondering if it’s because one of the conventions of romance is that we want our heroes and heroines to change, transformed by love and self-knowledge.
Trouble is that quite often it’s the badness of the heroine that keeps us reading, the My God what will she say or do next syndrome.
So how does your character undergo the necessary transformation without losing the vitality?
And here’s my very own bad girl, Caroline Elmhurst, from the book I’m struggling to finish, A Most Lamentable Comedy (Little Black Dress, 2009), leaving London (having just escaped her creditors). She’s promised her maid Mary an inside seat on the coach, but unfortunately only one is available…
“We’ll cut for the inside seat.” I pull my pack of cards from the capacious reticule with which I travel. “High I go inside, low you go outside.”
She cuts a king, and cackles with glee as I pull a four. “High I go inside, low you go outside,” I repeat, and push her toward the coach as she opens her mouth to howl protest. “And if you don’t keep quiet, I’ll tell everyone you stole my petticoats–why else would you wear four?”
I help her onto the roof of the coach with a vigorous shove to the arse, hand her the umbrella (I am not totally without feelings), and settle myself inside, opening the book of sermons I carry to repel male attention.
What bad girls in romance do you love, and do you love them more at the beginning or the end? How do their wild, wicked, impulsive etc. ways transform them or become transformed into something else?
I once heard a reader complain about an author (not me) who wrote about a fictional house in Bath at an address that would have placed it in the river. I suggested to the reader that the author may have used a nonexistent address to avoid conflicting with a real house with its own history, also that very few readers would know Bath in enough detail to care about something like that. This sort of exchange that makes me think about the boundaries between history and fiction. We are making this stuff up, after all. At what point can it be called “historically inaccurate”? 
Another issue of scope could be military rank and achievement. Romance heroes are often captains or perhaps majors; going any further up the chain could start to conflict with real history. It took influence as well as performance to move up as fast as Wellington did–and who wants their hero to compete with that reality? Yet I’m OK with heroes who (like Sharpe) play a significant role in historic events. There I think we’re in Author’s Note territory.
One borderline area we’ve discussed before is the plethora of dukes in romance. There really weren’t that many of them and fewer who came into their titles young enough to be typical romance hero material. To me inventing a new duke is like inventing a new country; it makes sense only if it’s really going to drive the story. Otherwise, I think a lesser title or even (gasp!) none at all would be more realistic. After all, Mr. Darcy didn’t need a title just to be hot. 🙂