Join us tomorrow, April 5, as we welcome Ann Lethbridge, who will tell us about her new Harlequin title, The Rake’s Inherited Courtesan…

The Riskies are happy to welcome Ann Lethbridge, whose first Harlequin Historical title, The Rake’s Inherited Courtesan, hits the shelves–now! Visit her website for more info…

Riskies: Welcome to RR, Ann! I see on your website that you were born in England–do you go back often? What are some of your favorite sites there?

Ann: We try to go back at least once a year! Both my husband and I are from England and our families call us homing pigeons. One of my favorite places to visit is Bath, with its association with Jane Austen, and of course London and York for sheer grandeur. There is so much history all over the British Isles every village and town holds its own fascination. We try to see new and lesser-known places on each visit, and I write about my travels on the Regency Ramble Blog. I have developed a real “thing” for ice houses. I collect them (visually). Yes, deep chilly holes in the ground! And castles. I once got to spend the night in a castle, now transformed into a hotel. A dream come true.

Fortunately, our families are very understanding, and happily seek out new places to tempt us.

Riskies: I also see that you have a Maltese that stays close to your desk! Does he help with your writing? (I, Amanda, also have a Poodle that sits under my desk while I work–she thinks there should be more dogs in books…)

Ann: Teaser is my constant companion! He likes to sit on my papers or my lap if I work on the couch. We have some severe arguments about it. He also gets me up and out of my chair in the middle of the day for a walk around the neighborhood. Good for both of us, and I usually come home with a plot point solved, or a new line of dialogue. I think Teaser would agree that more dogs in stories are a good thing, but most of my characters seem to dash about too much to be good pet-owning material–so far at least.

Riskies: Tell us about The Rake’s Inherited Courtesan! (Lovely cover, btw). Where did you get the inspiration for this story? Did you come across any interesting research tidbits?

Ann: Thank you! I, too, love the cover.

Inspiration is an odd thing, isn’t it? It pops up in the oddest places for me. The idea for The Rake’s Inherited Courtesan came from a visit to Dover, where my father was born. The sight of a house at the edge of the White Cliffs overlooking the English Channel struck me with its loneliness. The feeling there was a woman looking out one of the windows at France wouldn’t go away, and the story of who she was and she was there began to play itself out.

Christopher was so deliciously unwilling a hero when I first met him in the library of that house on the cliffs, I couldn’t resist him. He was perfect for Sylvia, even though neither of them would have agreed with that at the beginning of the book.

The story is set in Dover, Tunbridge Wells, London, with a brief trip to Calais–lots of dashing about! I lived near Tunbridge Wells in my courting days and enjoyed a beer or two with friends at the pubs in and around the Pantiles, so was fascinated to learn the history behind the spa and to look for old maps and buildings that were around in the Regency. And of course I just had to visit again. The beer tasted just the way I remembered. The Wells, as it’s known by locals, had long passed its prime by Regency times, but there were still elderly afficionados driving down from London and taking the waters (yucky, let me tell you!)

Riskies: And tell us about your Undone, The Rake’s Intimate Encounter! Will we see more stories of this rakish ladies’ club?

Ann: The short story, The Rake’s Intimate Encounter, introduces us to the two male leads in The Rake’s Inherited Courtesan, and provides an unexpected afternoon of delight for their best friend Anthony. No one is more surprised than Tony, let me tell you.

Ah, the club. I thought it time the ladies had a club of their own that wasn’t for bluestockings! It certainly has lots of potential for more stories, and there is an idea or two glimmering in the dark recesses of my brain. Whether any will come to fruition is a crystal ball question. Suffice it to say, I hope so.

(Undone ebooks can be ordered at eharlequin)

Riskies: What are some of your favorite romance novels?

Ann: I love romances, primarily historicals, but also fantasy and paranormal. My first romances were those of Georgette Heyer, introduced to me by my military father. A romantic at heart, for sure. I still love to read her books and especially These Old Shades. Something about girls disguised as boys gets me every time. And they did do it, you know. There are lots of real examples in history. One of my favorite books of all times is Laura Kinsale’s Flowers in the Storm. More recently I have been wowed by Joanna Bourne and Elizabeth Hoyt, because they have stretched the boundaries in Regencies, as JR Ward has in her paranormals. There are lots more favorites. I am slowly building a list on my website.

Riskies: And what’s next for you?

Ann: I’ve handed in my next Regency to my editor at the Richmond office, but don’t have a date or title yet. I’ve been filling in the Art Fact Sheets in anticipation of it being popped into the schedule sometime soon. My heroine has taken to the High Toby to save her family fortune, but it all goes dreadfully wrong. I hope to see it in print either later this year or early next. I am also working on another Undone.

Riskies: Thanks so much for visiting with us today!

Ann: Thank you for the invitation! It’s been an honor and a delight to be here at Risky Regencies. I would love to give away one signed copy of The Rake’s Inherited Courtesan to one of your guests who comments!

You heard her, everyone! Comment for a chance to win a signed copy…

This weekend, I was doing laundry after my vacation and cleaning out piles of old magazines, flipping through them before I put them in the recycle bin. (I like to tear out pics of pretty dresses, lipsticks to try, useful location/character images, etc). Anyway, I came across last summer’s In Style “what’s sexy now?” issue. As usual, some of the photos were gorgeous; some did nothing for me. Just like some actors or books others love and go crazy for leave me cold, and vice versa. And yet “sexy” is a vital concern, for romance novels as well as fashion mags. And in real life, too. (I had a long talk with some girlfriends at dinner Sunday night as I was thinking about this post, and after a couple glasses of wine there was much contention. One of my friends loves Simon Baker, who I think is boring as can be, while she mocks my fascination with Rob Pattinson’s angular beauty. Yet we are still friends–I think).

So–what is Sexy now? As romance authors, I guess we have to think about this quite a bit (tough job, I know, but it’s for our Art, of course….) How do we make our characters irresistible to each other, and thus to readers, when sexy is such a subjective thing? (For instance, it’s not enough to simply make them beautiful. Good looks are no guarantee of sexiness, nor is the lack thereof a deterrent. Was Mr. Rochester any less sexy after the fire?)

But what then makes romance novel characters, movie characters, real-life couples,
drawn to each other, combustible? How do we convey that attraction to readers and make them invested in it, too? It’s tough, to say the least. In real-life, and in characters, I do know that I love two qualities that may seem incompatible with each other–intensity and humor. A man who is focused and passionate about what he does, and is funny? Solid gold, people. I like to see that in the heroes I read and write about, too. (And there is such a fine line between “sexy bad-ass intense hero” and “complete jerk you would avoid at all costs”!)

So, now it’s your turn. What do you think is sexy? Who are some of your favorite characters, the ones you think of when you think “sexy”? What makes them so for you? Any movies/books that you love and others don’t, or vice versa?

Helen, you’re the winner of the autographed copy of The Rake’s Inherited Courtesan! Send your address to us at riskies@yahoo.com…

There is probably no single work of art that more personifies the Regency/Romantic period than Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 in E flat major (Op. 55), better known as the “Eroica” symphony. It displays such a range of high emotion, from the sadness of the main funeral march theme, to the exuberant, hopeful ending. It marks a break from the style of Mozart and Haydn, and a turn in the sensibility of the times. And it had its public premier on this date in 1805, in Vienna’s Theater du Wien, with the composer conducting!

But it’s conception began several years earlier. Around 1799, when Beethoven was in his 20s, he began consulting doctors about the persistent ringing in his ears. In 1801, he was advised to go easy on his hearing for a while and take a little vacation. Beethoven duly trekked off to the village of Heiligenstadt, but the rest, the walks, the composing, didn’t improve his hearing. In despair, he wrote a last will and testament, a document that came to be known as the “Heiligenstadt Testament.” In it he leaves his property to his brothers, but more important it’s a snapshot of his emotional turmoil at the time, fraught with pain and despair. It’s after this that we can see the stylistic shift that results in “Eroica.”

In October, 1802, Beethoven returned to Vienna, where he was engaged by theater owner Emanuel Schikaneder (who was the librettist and producer of Mozart’s Magic Flute) to compose an opera. After a long winter, there was still no opera, and Beethoven went off to Baden. He would spend the summer there and in the countryside, where he would create his new symphony.

It’s well known that Beethoven originally planned to dedicate the symphony to Napoleon, who seemed to embody the ideals of freedom and high emotion that marked the birth of the French Revolution. But in May 1804, Napoleon proclaimed himself emperor. Beethoven’s assistant, Ferdinand Ries, writes in his memoir, “I was the first to tell him the news that Bonaparte had declared himself emperor, whereupon he broke into a rage and exclaimed ‘So he is no more than a common mortal! Now, too, he will tread underfoot all the rights of man, indulge only his ambition; now he will become a tyrant!’ Beethoven went to the table, seized the title-page, tore it in half and threw it on the floor. The page had to be re-copied and it was only now that it received the title ‘Sinfonia eroica’.”

In the end, the symphony was dedicated to Beethoven’s patron Prince Lobkowitz, and it had its first, private performance at the prince’s castle of Eisenberg in Bohemia. The public premier followed a few months later.

The critics were, er, divided in their opinions. The Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung said, “a daring, wild fantasia of inordinate length and extreme difficulty of execution. There is no lack of striking and beautiful passages in which the force and talent of the author are obvious; but on the other hand the work seems often to lose itself in utter confusion. In the present work he (the reviewer) finds much that is odd and harsh, enormously increasing the difficulty of comprehending the music, and obscuring its unity almost entirely.”

Der Freimuthige said, “One party contend that this particular symphony is a masterpiece, that this is exactly the true style for music of the highest type and that if it does not please now it is because the public is not sufficiently cultivated in the arts to comprehend these higher spheres of beauty, but after a couple of thousand years its effect will not be lessened. The other party absolutely denies any artistic merit to this work. Neither beauty, true sublimity nor power have anywhere been achieved. For the audience the Symphony was too difficult, too long and B. himself too rude, for he did not deign to give even a nod to the applauding part of the audience. Perhaps he did not find the applause sufficiently enthusiastic.”

After the first few performances, the symphony was only heard 3 more times in Vienna during Beethoven’s lifetime. Now, of course, it’s considered a work of genius and enormous beauty.

(For more of Ries’s biography of Beethoven, see the 1987 translation from Great Ocean Publishers, Beethoven Remembered)

What is your favorite work by Beethoven? Any artistic creations (paintings, books, music) that you think say “Regency Period”? Have you seen any good movies about Beethoven (somehow, there just don’t seem to be any to compare with Mozart and Amadeus…)?