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Monthly Archives: July 2009

RWA ’09

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I’m back! I got home yesterday evening from RWA, and am still a bit stunned and zombie-fied, so I’m afraid this won’t be a very in-depth post. 🙂 (Look for more info next week!). This was a very fun, upbeat conference–I would rate the Marriott Wardman Park above average for conference hotels (especially for its nice neighborhood with such a plethora of good restaurants!), and the conference attendees get a gold star for fun conversation and the best parties EVER. A few highlights:

The Beau Monde Soiree! (The costumes were gorgeous, and I enjoyed the dancing–watching, anyway. My hoops were too heavy and my shoes too pointy-toed to participate. In these pics I’m with Megan, and Keira Soleore and Michelle Willingham, who looked gorgeous in her Josephine-style gown. And our own Louisa won the Royal Ascot!!)

The Harlequin Party (of course! In these pics I’m with a bunch of people–Andrea Pickens, Diane, Deb Marlowe, Michelle W. and Elizabeth Mahon of the Scandalous Women blog, and with my Grand Central Publishing editor Alex Logan, who gave a thumbs-up to the dessert selection. The third pic is Michelle W. and her husband, who were totally The Cuteness Couple at the party…)

The post-awards ceremony! (The disgustingly tall woman is my Harlequin editor Joanne Grant, and of course you know Megan by her lovely vintage gown. One day she will wake up and find I’ve snuck into her house and stolen those dresses away since she once made the mistake of showing me where she keeps them)

And I even got to play tourist for a day, which I usually don’t at conference! On Sunday I hit the Mall with Keira, Regina Scott, and Marissa Doyle. I saw the American History museum (including these gowns once worn by Martha Washington and Dolley Madison) and briefly ran through the American Indian building, which was gorgeous (I’m determined to go back there next time). We had a fabulous dinner, too, handmade pasta, calamari, and tiramisu, yum!

I have to admit, though, the highlight of the conference was doughnuts, cocktails, and True Blood. Megan and Carolyn, you are superlative hostesses and I hope the neighbors didn’t call the front desk on you. (I even got to catch the new episode on Sunday as I packed, and there was a bit more Eric than usual, yay! We even glimpsed his Viking days…)

And major congrats to Pam Rosenthal on your much, much deserved RITA win! If you haven’t yet read this fun, literate, sexy book, run out and get it right now.

In short, it was a fabulous time. It’s always hard to get to the end of RWA, say good-bye to everyone, and find myself back here doing laundry, trying to get my Pug to take her eardrops, and actually writing rather than just talking about writing. There will be more info later–just as soon as I take a nap…

Posted in Former Riskies, Risky Regencies | Tagged | 23 Replies

Gone To RWA! And Bastille Day

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I’m jetting off to Washington DC this morning for the RWA festivities (having finally packed my suitcase to somewhat satisfactory results)! Will be back next week with pics and reports.

In the meantime, today is also Bastille Day! Time to break out the baguettes and champagne! And if you’re in Paris, go watch the festivities on the Champs-Elysees for me. The day commemorates the storming of the Bastille prison in 1789 (the prison had once been notorious for holding political prisoners, but when it was stormed it held only 7 inmates, mostly forgers and petty crooks. 8 attackers and 1 defender, Bastille governor de Launay, were killed in the attack). It also marks the day a year later when the Fete de la Federation was held in celebration, a great feast on the Champ de Mars marked with fireworks, copious amounts of wine, and (it’s said) running naked in the streets to celebrate freedom. The good times didn’t last too long, though.

So Happy Bastille Day! See you next week….

Posted in Former Riskies, Risky Regencies | Tagged | 3 Replies

Random Googling in Historical Books or Carolyn is Very Naughty

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I’m being a bit naughty in this post so move along if such things bother you word-wise. I limited my search to books publishing in the years 1811 – 1820 and written in English. The language restriction didn’t work too well as foreign language books were still returned. But, let’s carry on. Perhaps we’ll put to rest some assumptions or prove them. Which will it be? Regardless, I think the results will be interesting.

I am sorry (I think, but then again, maybe not) that as I followed down this iniquitous path, I started giggling and perhaps going a bit off track. Oh well. You are forewarned. This post degenerates quickly. You might want to stop while it’s still safe.

Bugger

How, exactly, was this word used in the Regency period? As a verb connoting a certain sexual practice? A verb more slightly less specific or perhaps an expletive? The answer appears to be all of the above. Claims that the word was less broadly used than it is today seem to be incorrect.

25 books returned

A few are clearly irrelevant, but just looking at the results we see the word being used in a name-calling sense; In The Lexicom Balatronicum: A blackguard, rascal, term of reproach. But in sources drawn from trials, we see the sexual sense: A Relation of a Quaker, that to the Shame of his Profession, attempted to bugger a Mare… as well as several examples of the word used as an expletive.

Fuck

Oh my

Apparently, this is also a Dutch word. And there are some rather amusing typos where the letter P has been mistaken for F and rendered Shakespeare differently than one would expect. Also, and this is really VERY amusing to me, the Google OCR could not correctly render the long squiggly lowercase letter s that in many books of the period looks a lot like an f but isn’t. Thus instances of say, suck, sucking, sucker and the like become versions of the F-bomb. In fact, the innocent word such comes in for its share of OCR maddness with the ch being reported as ck along with s being replaced with f…

Although this was a very amusing search, it would take hours to find actual instances of the F-word so I’m moving on.

Quim

226 results

Referring, of course, quite naughtily, to a certain part of female anatomy. However, it is also a perfectly innocent nut, and a common and rather boring word in Latin. Also a city and someone’s last name. Oh. Gee. I’m leaving this one and moving on.

Penis

486 results

Lots of boring medical texts, though I’m sure there are pictures. Samuel Cooper’s 1815 book Surgery has my favorite excerpt:

When the attempt fails leeches should be applied to the glans, and the flow of blood be afterwards promoted by immersing the penis in warm water

That does not sound very fun.

Vagina

Hah! The ladies win!! 500 results

Well well well. What have we here? From the Encyclopaedia Perthensis; Or Universal Dictionary of the Arts, Sciences… Volume 2, 1816

The clitoris is a small spongy body bearing some slight analogy and resemblance to the penis in men… This part has been supposed to be the chief seat of a woman’s pleasure in coition as the glans penis is in men, but this is somewhat doubtful.

We can now officially stop saying the clitoris was unknown or nobody knew it might be an important bit for the women. Women surely figured this out on their own, but it seems there were men with a clue. Thank you.

asshole

3 results

To be honest, I expected this. Back in the day, the asshole was a mechanical part; the place for receiving ashes under the grate…. And, alas, we must reduce the search results by one because one of the books is an odd Google OCR error. The text shows the word asshole but the actual page says the whole.

which leads me directly to…

Arse

618 results

Pretty much what you’d expect. So here’s some interesting bits.

From A compleat collection of English proverbs which seems to be something on the order of a Barlett’s Quotations.

  • You would kiss my arse before my breeches are down.

  • Kit careless, your arse hangs by trumps

  • Proverbial similies, in which the Quality and the Subject begin with the same letter:

    as bare as a bird’s arse

And there, I’m done with my juvenile traipse through Google Books. I had fun. Did you?

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Turn up the Volume!

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A novel requires some measure of structure to hold it together, a plot tends to work nicely for this. To deconstruct a bit, traditionally, a novel is divided into chapters and at one time was even commonly divided into physically separate volumes. Over time, the result of the separate volumes has been the unhappy event of missing volumes. If I had only volumes 1 and 2 of the original Pride and Prejudice I think I would be very sad. (I don’t have any, by the way.) But I do have single volumes of other very old books.

I’ve heard only anecdotally that the reason for separate volumes stemmed from the convenience of being able to pass on volume 1 to the next reader while proceeding with volume 2. I’ve never come across this as any more than speculation. Personally, I suspect the volume decision was a financial one and/or a limitation of the materials at hand, and the fact that the separate volumes could be passed on so that readers didn’t have to wait for someone to finish the entire book was simply fortuitous for the customer. Perhaps in my copious spare time I’ll try to track that down.

The historical practice of physically separate volumes has gone by the wayside, thank goodness, because imagine the horror of your TBR pile if your favorite historical romance (let’s say it’s Scandal by yours truly) came in three volumes and now that you finally have time to read this lovely book, you discover you’re missing volume two. Or the book eating cat (we have one of those) has managed to drag volume three under the bed for a nice snack of the opening chapters. Or that you picked up all three volumes on your way to the airport but only when you’re at 40,000 feet do you discover you have the volume one of some other book.

If books today still came in separate volumes, would each volume have different cover art? This, of course, was not an issue back in the day. You either went cheap and kept your books in their original boards (what would the neighbors think of that?) or you bound them yourself, probably in Morocco leather. And since Carolyn Jewel of 1815 would surely have been Lady Readerham (married to the dashing and wholly reformed rake the earl of Readerham— I assure you, we had quite the tumultuous courtship and that the story about how he got that scar is completely false. There were never any crocodiles in the moat.) At any rate, I would have a nice little coronet to have embossed on the covers of the books in my library.

But that was then. (Would have been then?) What about today? Would bookstores today even allow you to buy single volumes of a multi-volume work? Or would there soon be a healthy after-market source for orphaned volumes? Maybe there’d be special deals, Buy Volumes 1 and 2, get Volume 3 for half off!

What do you think? And if you lived in 1815, who would you be and what would be in your library? Sorry, Lord Readerham is taken.

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The Link-o-Matic Machine Debuts!

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I’m pretty sure I’m still not completely coherent after my return from RWA Nationals so what the heck, here’s some links to interesting stuff.

Posted in Former Riskies | Tagged | 8 Replies