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Monthly Archives: October 2009

Emily Bryan talks about A Christmas Ball

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Hang your mistletoe and stir your pudding. Today we welcome Leisure author Emily Bryan who will tell us about the Christmas Anthology she shares with fellow authors, Jennifer Ashley and Alissa Johnson. Emily is also offering to give away one of her backlist books. Read on and welcome Emily.

“Great writing and research skills, as well as her ability to weave a good old-fashioned story with heft, make her an author to watch.”~Michelle Buonfiglio, RomanceBuyTheBook

1) Tell us about A Christmas Ball and your story in it!

Thanks so much for having me here at Risky Regencies!

A Christmas Ball is a collection of three Regency-set Christmas stories from USA Today Bestseller Jennifer Ashley, Alissa Johnson and me. Since I never like to do the expected, my heroine in My Lady Below Stairs is a scullery maid. Jane Tate is a dead ringer for her well-born half-sister, so when Lady Sybil runs off with an Italian portrait painter, Jane is called in to pose as Sybil long enough to accept an arranged marriage proposal at the Christmas Ball. Needless to say, Ian Michael, the well-muscled head groom who loves Jane, makes plans to crash the party himself. It was great fun to write!

2) How do the three stories fit together? How did this anthology come about? How are the tales connected?

A Christmas Ball is the brain-child of our fabulous editor, Leah Hultenschmidt, at Dorchester Publishing. She conceived a holiday anthology where the stories are united solely by setting and time. The date is December 19, 1822 (not technically Regency for you purists out there, since Prinny has been on the throne for two years, but it’s before the Victorian era kicks off in 1837.) The characters in all three of our novellas attend the same Christmas ball at Lord and Lady Hartwell’s elegant London home. We had to agree on the floor plan of the mansion and certain details about the ball, but otherwise, we were given complete autonomy in writing our stories. Jennifer used her novella as a chance to revisit her Nvengaria paranormal Regency world and Alissa penned a delightful Darcy-esque hero in hers.

3) Did you come across any interesting research on historical Christmases?

Oh, yes! First of all, most of the way we celebrate Christmas now is directly linked to Victorian traditions. For example, there were no Christmas trees in England in 1822. That custom was imported from Germany after Queen Victoria married her German cousin. But greenery was used for decoration, most specifically a “kissing bough.” This was an arrangement of ivy (to symbolize women), holly (whose prickly leaves remind us of men!) and of course mistletoe (still used to steal kisses.) During the Regency era, mistletoe was a limited time offer. For each kiss, the man was supposed to pluck one of the berries. When the berries were all gone, so were the free kisses.

4) What are your own favorite holiday traditions?

Being with family is the most important tradition for us, which means we’ve spent more Christmases in airports and on the road than I care to count. But once we’re all together, before we open our presents, my dad always reads the Christmas story from the Bible, the Luke 2 passage. Any time I read that scripture to myself, I hear my dad’s voice in my head.

5) What is next for you?

I just finished Stroke of Genius (coming June 2010). I adore Crispin Hawke, my hero for this story. He’s a brilliant, but cynical artist who’s so handsome my heroine compares him to a total eclipse. Dangerous to look upon.

Crispin is engaged to sculpt Grace’s hands and decides to help Grace bag a titled husband. But when he starts falling for her himself, the games are just beginning.

I’m in that limbo-land of being between books at present. Just listening to my mental cast of characters and deciding whose story needs telling next. It’s really pretty exciting when a new book starts taking shape.

Another thing I’m excited about now is my MERRY CHRISTMAS BALL CONTEST. Readers who subscribe to my newsletter and enter this contest may win a $100 B & N gift card! So please pop over and enter today. And I’d like to give away a choice from my backlist to someone who leaves a comment or question here today.

To get the conversation started: What’s your favorite Christmas tradition? It can be historic or contemporary.

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Steampunk Romance and The Regency

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The January issue of Marie Claire will, hopefully, feature an article I’ve written on steampunk romance. Steampunk romance is being hailed as the successor to the paranormal romance boom, and I discuss a bit (very little bit! 300 words!) of what it is.

Steampunk combines mechanical innovation (the steam) with subversive Victorian drama (the punk). It’s rich in alternate history, innovation, delicious fashion, repression and open expression and all kinds of cool literary types.

It has its foundation in the Victorian period, but as I discovered, its roots are firmly planted in the Regency: See, one of the first and best examples of steampunk (sans the romance part) was first written by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling in The Difference Engine. The Difference Engine describes what would have happened if inventor Charles Babbage had succeeded in building a mechanical computer, which he did work on in real life. With–wait for the Regency connection!–Lord Byron‘s daugher, the Hon. Augusta Ada Byron (known as Ada), later the Countess of Lovelace.

The first steampunk commercial fiction is just being released, most notably Gail Carriger‘s Soulless, which has vampires, parasols, Queen Victoria, murder and tea-drinking (I am so excited to read this!). Coming at the end of this year is my friend Liz Maverick‘s Crimson & Steam, while Meljean Brook‘s first Iron Seas book comes out in Fall 2010.

But since we’re talking Regency over here, what would you twist to make a Regency-set steampunk romance? Does the period suit what I’ve described? What alternate histories are your favorites?

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Betsy, uncharmed by Charm City

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Blogger Madeleine Conway at That Reading/Writing Thing had some very nice things to say about A Most Lamentable Comedy, including this statement:

… her cast of secondary characters, however improbable, also have that unmistakeable air of coming from some research that amply demonstrates that old cliché about truth, fiction and strangeness.

Quite often here at the Riskies I like to explore the oddities of history that I’ve discovered and when Diane blogged earlier this week about Napoleon, I was inspired to dig into the scattered and messy files of my memory to write about Betsy Bonaparte (1785-1879), Baltimore girl who made good–for a time. She was a rich merchant’s daughter who married Bonaparte’s younger brother Jerome Bonaparte in 1803.

Big brother, who had his eyes on further conquest of Europe through his siblings’ significant marriages, was not amused and ordered Jerome back to France–without his blushing bride. Poor Betsy, pregnant and alone, took refuge in London where she gave birth to their son Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte aka Bo. Big brother Napoleon, not particularly bothered by such trifling matters as bigamy, married his troublesome younger brother off to a German princess, Catherina of Wurtemburg.

Betsy and baby Bo returned to Baltimore where she was notorious for her European connections and her fashion, which was a bit much by federal American standards. Rosalie Calvert, mistress of Riversdale House, Maryland, met Betsy Bonaparte in 1804 at a party hosted by Robert Smith, Jefferson’s secretary of the navy, and commented that she …was wearing a dress so transparent that you could see the color and shape of her thighs and more! Several ladies made a point of leaving the room and one informed the belle that if she did not change her manner of dressing, she would never be asked anywhere again.

Another guest gave a similar account: She [Madame Bonaparte] has made a great noise here, and mobs of boys have crowded round her splendid equipage to see what I hope will not often be seen in this country, an almost naked woman. An elegant and select party was given to her by Mrs. Robt. Smith; her appearance was such that it threw all the company into confusion and no one dared to look at her but by stealth.

Betsy was finally granted a pension by Napoleon, but never the title she wanted so much, and in 1815 a divorce by the state of Maryland , and set her hopes on Bo making a grand European marriage. Bo was not interested, becoming a lawyer and marrying a local heiress. Mama was not pleased.

It was impossible to bend my talents and my ambition to the obscure destiny of a Baltimore housekeeper, and it was absurd to attempt it after I had married the brother of an emperor. . . . When I first heard that my son could condescend to marry anyone in Baltimore, I nearly went mad. . . . I repeat, that I would have starved, died, rather than have married in Baltimore. . . .

In 1855, when the Bonapartes were again in power in France, Bo was offered the title of Duke of Sartene. He turned it down. Ironically, her widowed sister in law Marianne Patterson married Richard Wellesley, the older brother of the Duke of Wellington. Poor Betsy, surrounded by family members either turning down or effortlessly achieving the greatness she craved!

Betsy, disillusioned and alone (she never remarried) spent the rest of her life amassing money and at the time of her death, having outlived Bo by nine years, had an estate worth $1, 500,000. She’s buried in Greenmount Cemetery, Baltimore. Her life inspired a play, Glorious Betsy, by Rida Johnson Young, which was made into a movie in 1928 and again as Hearts Divided (1936).

What are your favorite examples of truth being stranger than fiction?

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13th Vendémiaire An IV or Oct 5 1795

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13th Vendémiaire An IV (look here to see how the French Revolutionists counted time)  or October 5 1795 was known as the Day of the Sections, an important day in Napoleon Bonaparte’s life. 

Before Oct 5, Napoleon’s future did not look promising. He’d been imprisoned for a while after the coup d’état of 9 Thermidor, because he was a friend of Robespierre’s brother. After that he was unemployed and was thinking of leaving France.

But then rich Parisian royalists try to take over the National Convention by force and the Convention hires Compte de Barras to defend it. Barras enlists Napoleon’s help. (He also passes on his mistress to Napoleon; the mistress eventually became his Empress Josephine). Napoleon drives the mob away with a “whiff of grapeshot,” killing about 200 (or 1400, as another site said) and successfully saving the Palace of the Tuileries. 

Napoleon is rewarded with fame, wealth and the patronage of the Directory. He soon is appointed commander of the Army of Italy, thus beginning a long series of victorious campaigns. 

Five years after 13th Vendémiaire An  IV, Napoleon launches his own coup d’etat and makes himself First Consul of France. 

I’m used to thinking of Napoleon as “the enemy,” but he really did a bunch of great things, besides winning battles:
1. Established the Code of Napoleon
2. Established a public school system
3. Reconciled with the Catholic Church
4. Created the Bank of France, stabilizing the currency

5. Restored the Gregorian Calendar and did away with the Revolutionists’ way of counting time 

What else? 
What’s your opinion of Napoleon?

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