Hello, everyone! Amanda here, sitting in for Elena, who is off traveling the world. She’ll be with you on Saturday to wrap up our anniversary/new blog look week. In the meantime, I am finishing up the WIP, thinking of new projects, and coming up with all the ways I love the Riskies. (I am also going to borrow from Cara, and list some favorite posts of the past year!). So, what I like the most:

1) The friends, of course! Building a cozy little place here has introduced me to so many far-flung new friends, who share not only my love of history (some would say geek-dom of history, but they just don’t understand…) but let me ramble on about fashion, perfume, English real estate, and Orlando/James/Matthew. It’s great to come here every day, even if work is dreary or the book is stalled, and know something fun will be going on and there will be people to “talk” to.

And speaking of history geek-dom, I really enjoyed putting together this “Dating Life: 2008 vs 1543” post because I got to talk about Katherine Parr. I was astonished to hear that everyone doesn’t have a favorite wife of Henry VIII! πŸ™‚

I also really liked doing this “Women in Politics” post, centered around the Duchess of Devonshire and her political campaigning. I am going to the Democratic National Convention next week, so things like this have been much in my mind lately. We have certainly progressed, though maybe not as quickly as women like Georgiana would have liked!

2) Interviews! I love doing interviews with authors, either ones who are already friends or ones whose work I’ve admired but have never been able to meet them in person. The last thing I need is more books on that TBR pile, but when I hear about the great ones coming out I can’t help myself! Yes, I am Amanda and I am a bookaholic. I really enjoyed this Nicola Cornick interview from July, though now that she has been recruited to be my tour guide to Hever Castle next month she might be sorry she came here!


3) Theme weeks. Once we get them together (I believe Janet mentioned something about herding cats…) they are great fun. This year we had Waterloo Week and a whole week of celebrating Jane Austen’s birthday

I also love discussions of historical movies (the rest of the year should be full of this, with releases like The Duchess and Young Victoria), writing tips, travel advice, etc. Too many things to list here!

So, what are your favorite things about Risky Regencies? What sort of posts do you enjoy the most? What would you like to see more of in the future?

I will give away copies of both my Renaissance books, A Notorious Woman and A Sinful Alliance (or, if you have already won these, a copy of one of my out-of-print Signet Regencies!), plus a silver Brighton bookmark!