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Monthly Archives: May 2012

Social Justice Romance

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The book jacket of my edition of North and South states that “Critical generalizations about Mrs Gaskell have tended to portray her either as an essentially feminine novelist, full of charm, tenderness and little else, or as a pioneer of the ‘social problem’ novel. Neither view does sufficient justice to her best novels…”
I agree. This book should not be pigeon-holed based on either the romantic elements or the social issues, but apparently, this sort of categorization was happening long before bookstores divided books into “romance” and “fiction.”  Personally, I love how Gaskell fused these elements in this story. Characters don’t exist separate from the issues of their times.
When I first joined RWA, I heard a lot of advice on how to write the romance that sells, which included “No saving the whales”, i.e. don’t address any controversial issues. At the time I was glad that my Regency ideas were tugging more strongly at me, since my only idea for a contemporary romance involved marine biologists.
The purpose of a romance novel isn’t to preach, and I do understand the marketing rationale involved, but this feels very limiting. I like a romance where the characters have more interesting goals than the pursuit of wealth or sexual pleasure for its own sake (though even those goals can be interesting if it turns out they mask something deeper). They could be less controversial goals like caring for family or solving a mystery, but they could be the pursuit of a cause, as long as it’s integral to the characters.
Some of our Risky books and other historical romances have done this. I suspect social issues are a little easier in historical romance, since the issues have changed form in modern times. I doubt anyone in mainstream society would openly support slavery. But I think things like this are still with us in many ways, so maybe touching on them in historical romance is a subversive way of addressing them.
Anyway, maybe the industry prohibition against issues is thawing. I can’t remember when I read that there were some romances that dealt with wildlife preservation. I made a mental note to check some of them out, but life intervened, so I don’t know how well they worked. And indie authors can try things traditional publishers might not.
I think it would be tricky to have the hero and heroine on opposing sides of an issue, since it’s hard to make both sympathetic unless it’s an issue (unlike racism) where both sides have some merit and where compromise or creative solutions are a good answer. Otherwise, the cause could be something that unites the hero and heroine rather than the source of their conflict.
What do you think of issues in romance, historical or contemporary?  Any books that made the mix work particularly well?
Elena
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The Riskies Welcome Gail Eastwood!

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I’m delighted to introduce today’s guest, Gail Eastwood.
Gail worked as a journalist, theatre critic and PR consultant before she penned her first romance novel, A Perilous Journey. Since then, she has written six more Signet Regencies which have been nominated or won awards including the NJRW Golden Leaf, the Holt Medallion, and Romantic Times Book Club’s Reviewers’ Choice Awards. She also teaches writing and takes an avid interest in theatre, historical dance and costuming. Her books are known for their emotional depth, mystery and adventure and innovative characters and plot elements, such as a hero who is a French prisoner of war (The Captain’s Dilemma).
But the real reason I’m so thrilled to welcome Gail is that like me, she is making a comeback after having to take a break from writing to deal with serious family health issues. Starting sometime last fall, we have been emailing each other regularly to cheer each other on and help each other balance our creative lives with the continued challenges of caring for our loved ones. Gail has been a wonderful support to me; she is not only talented, but one of the kindest writers I know.
 
Today we’re going to talk about Gail’s upcoming ebook reissues, A Perilous Journey (available now) and An Unlikely Hero, coming in July. Enter a comment or question for the chance to win a Kindle or Nook copy of A Perilous Journey (winner to be chosen by the Riskies).
Praise for A Perilous Journey and An Unlikely Hero

“A scintillating debut…(Gail Eastwood) charms us with her sparkling storytelling.” – Romantic Times Book Reviews (A Perilous Journey)

“The brilliantly versatile Gail Eastwood changes pace once again to bring us a frothy Regency delight spiced with touching emotion…. beguiling characters and zesty interplay.” – Romantic Times Book reviews (An Unlikely Hero) 
Tell us about these two stories.
These two books tell the related-but-separate stories of twins Gillian Kentwell and her brother Gilbey, Viscount Cranford. When we first meet them in A Perilous Journey, headstrong Gillian has run away from home after finding no other way to avoid the marriage to an elderly neighbor her guardian has arranged. She has romanticized ideas about Scotlandand is heading there, hoping to find refuge with an aunt she has never met. Gilbey has come along to try to protect her, knowing that she will never give up the 400-mile path she has chosen. Young and inexperienced, they are already in trouble their first night out. That’s when they meet up with Julian Rafferty de Raymond, the Earl of Brinton, still one of my favorite heroes. Brinton rescues them twice in less than 12 hours, and by then is hopelessly ensnared by his own curiosity, not to mention his attraction to Gillian.
Their progress north through western England (including a stopover in Bath) includes misadventures and detours as they try to evade their pursuers, always driven by the question of whether or not they will be caught before they can reach their destination. Anyone who travels, even today, knows that it can test the best of relationships, but it can also forge strong bonds. The journey these three characters undertake certainly does both! A surprise awaits them in Scotland, however, and they must face more challenges before Gillian and Brinton can earn a happy ending.
Gilbey’s happy ending is that he is going to be sent off to university. An Unlikely Hero  takes place after he has been there three years and is the story of what happens when one of his Cambridge pals, the son of a duke, convinces him to attend a house party at the duke’s estate. Gilbey is a reluctant guest enlisted to help keep watch over his friend’s sisters, identical twins known as the Lioness and the Lamb. They are notorious for refusing marriage offers and testing their suitors, but this time their father has drawn a line, declaring that they must finally choose husbands from among the assembled guests.
The twins’ behavior is not all capriciousness and mischief—they have a dark secret, and one of the guests is trying to use it to blackmail them into a marriage. Gilbey, fighting his attraction to the beautiful twins, finds trying to meet the expectations of everyone around him challenge enough for his wits. The Duke has made it clear that Gilbey is not eligible and must keep his distance. The suitors have made it clear they don’t appreciate any perceived competition from Gilbey. But Fate keeps landing him repeatedly in the twins’ path and the center of attention. How can a hero worth his salt not step up to help them? What help is there for his heart, irretrievably lost to a twin he can never have?
What inspired you to write each?
A Perilous Journey, which was my first novel, was stuck in my head for many years before I finally realized no one else would ever write this story—only I could release it! Does that sound completely weird? I always wanted to be an author, and I worked as a journalist for many years, but I just somehow thought someone else would think of this story and write it. LOL! Writing an entire novel is a daunting prospect when you first begin—even for an experienced writer. Maybe I was avoiding the reality of that, or the time just wasn’t right, or the story needed all that time to percolate.
An Unlikely Hero, on the other hand, was a story I never planned to write. Gilbey is such an antithesis of your typical romance hero—he wears glasses, he’s so fair he blushes, he’s a little accident-prone and he’s a total geek! I was surprised when readers wrote to me and approached me at booksignings asking when I would do his story! As soon as I said, “He isn’t really a romance hero,” he started kicking me and protesting the way I had pegged him. He is unfailingly loyal and sweet. I realized that, like all good Beta heroes, he had what it takes underneath, and that stripping away his outer layers to reveal the hero inside would be so much fun to do. But I didn’t have a lady for him, and that makes it pretty hard to have a romance!
Venetia and Vivian St. Aldwyn walked up to me in a dream, and I knew immediately one of them was meant for him. But they were smart, beautiful, rich daughters of a duke—what was their problem? You know, no conflict, no story! I muddled over that for a few days before I saw an article in my local paper that totally sparked the idea for the secret that drives them. I loved the idea that underneath the romance in this book there might also be a social message. I love that a little history always gets taught with each book, too!
Were there any particular challenges you encountered in your research? Any new or surprising historical information that you discovered?
I love, love, love to research. Stopping to actually write the story can be the challenge! A Perilous Journey required a ton of research because of all the locations in the story, not to mention understanding methods of travel in 1816, and so much more. I did some of my research “on location” in England, and at least one incident in the book, at Morecambe Bay, was inspired by the delightful and purely serendipitous discovery of the Hest Bank Hotel and its long history as a rescue station for people caught by the bay’s tidal bore. Who could resist?
Settings are important to me as a “world-building” element of story. The location of the duke’s estate in An Unlikely Hero was carefully chosen and researched. The surname I gave the duke’s family also derived from the local area where the story is set, and that led to a surprise. Five years after the book was published I got an email from the Earl of St. Aldwyn, a modern-day English peer, asking about the book characters’ names. Yikes! I always research my made-up title names to be sure they don’t actually belong to anyone, and I was in the clear, since the title names I used were Roxley and Edmonton, not St Aldwyn. But I hadn’t checked on St. Aldwyn, since I only used it for a family name! As I reassured the earl, that name came “straight off the map” and most certainly was not intended to reflect any connection to his family. He asked for a copy of the book, which of course I was happy to send!
We pride ourselves in writing Risky Regencies. Tell us what is risky about your books?
Wow, there are so many answers to this! One risk now, of course, is whether or not the freshness in these stories still holds up after all this time, or if the stories can still charm readers anyway. I suppose the greatest risk is the chance of writing something that readers won’t want to read or won’t “get” when you write against type, which I like to do. I recently described what I write as “kind of off-beat sweet Regencies with a twist of suspense.” When my books were first being published (1990’s), I was lauded for pushing the genre’s boundaries. I was nominated for RT’s Career Achievement Award twice, and people asked me if I was trying to invent a new sub-genre, the “Regency Intrigue”. We were just beginning to break out from the “drawing room comedy” style of traditional Regency that many readers still love and prefer. The genre has expanded so much since those days, I doubt anyone would think my stories are ground-breaking now, but at the time I wanted deeper emotion and more plot. Mary Jo Putney and Mary Balogh and a few others were heading that way, too. I wanted to be able to do some darker stories. I wasn’t sure if I was writing Traditional Regencies or Historicals—what I wrote was something in between! That was a risk, and I will always be grateful to Signet for going along with it.
I am drawn to write about things that I haven’t seen done. Venturing off the path can be a great way to risk falling on your face, though, LOL. For instance, when I tackled The Captain’s Dilemma (1995), I wasn’t sure a romance between an English miss and a French prisoner of war could even be successfully done, given the depth of the conflict. I hunted and hunted for other stories that tried this idea and found almost none (and those I found did not really succeed as romances). That was scary! Yet my research showed that there really may have been some true-life cases, and I really wanted to do that story. For The Lady from Spain I wanted to do a story where the heroine was seeking revenge, instead of the man. (That’s not so unusual to find now!) In The Rake’s Mistake, I wanted to do something with pleasure sailing on the Thames, totally charmed by an engraving I saw. I like to take my characters out into an expanded Regency world not limited to the ballrooms and Almack’s. I am so grateful that readers have been willing to go along!
I haven’t even touched on book-specific “risky writing” and if this wasn’t already too long, we could also talk about the emotional risks characters face. I’m sure we could talk about this stuff for hours!!!
What is it that most excites you about the Regency setting?
I think Beatrix Potter and A.A. Milne started my love affair with England long before I found Jane Austen, but it’s also in my blood –a raft of English ancestors must surely influence me, because I always feel like I’ve come home whenever I have the privilege of visiting over there. Of course there’s another theory –a psychic once told me I lived during the Regency. Do you believe in past lives? It’s a shame I can’t recall any of it –think of all the research time that would save! Despite my tendency to expand beyond them, I do love the clothing, the balls, the glittering lifestyle of the upper reaches of society in this period. The aristocracy were the celebrities of their day! I love the elegance, and the elegant language. But I also think part of the appeal is that it was a transitional time, bridging the 18th century “Age of Enlightenment” and the more modern Victorian era when the world became industrialized and much more recognizable to us. Regency people were living in a time when things were changing at a much faster pace than ever before in history, and I think that resonates with us today—we all face the challenges of adjusting. Challenges make good stories, and when we write about this time period, the challenges of the changing society are always at least part of the background if they are not part of the primary plot!
Historical costuming and historical dance are among my hobbies, and although I first got into those through the medieval and Renaissance periods as a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism (in which I am still active), I quickly expanded into the 18th century and Regency periods as well. Here’s a picture of me in the second Regency gown I have made (my first one now gets loaned out to ladies much thinner and younger than I am!). It was taken at a local “Jane Austen Birthday” dance. Some folks may recall me teaching historical dance at a couple of RWA national conferences, and leading the dancing at our Beau Monde mini-conferences a few times—many years ago at this point! I also still participate in English Country Dancing in my local area.
What are you working on next?

I am busily preparing the ebook edition of The Lady from Spain to be my first self-pubbed reissue, and The Captain’s Dilemma will follow it soon. But I am also working on a new book, which I hope to have out next year. It features Harriet Pritchard, who has appeared as a secondary character in two of my previous books –she was a younger sister in one, and then turned up as a friend of the heroine in another one. She actually is referred to at the end of my last book, but not by name! Although readers have asked for this, too, I couldn’t do her story until I found the right man for her –to my surprise he turned out to be the best friend of the hero in that last book, The Rake’s Mistake, which should be reissued next year. Harry and Peter are such opposites (at least on the surface), but I know they are meant for each other! I’m having great fun with the new story and hope readers will too.
Thanks for talking to us, Gail!
Thank you so much for having me as a guest on the Risky Regencies blog, Elena! I really enjoy the blog and it’s both an honor and a pleasure to be here.
Ask Gail a question for the chance to win a Kindle or Nook copy of A Perilous Journey.
Void where prohibited. You must be over 18. No purchase necessary. Post your comment by midnight EST on Thursday, May 31st.  Either include your email address in your comment or make sure to check back Friday for the announcement post.
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Memorial Day and Movies

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Today is Memorial Day in the USA, a day of remembrance that began as Decoration Day, a day freemen (freed slaves) decorated the graves of Union soldiers. The holiday eventually became a day to include remembrance of all who have died in defense of our country.

Most of us do not know first hand what soldiers face when they are sent into combat. We suppose their valor, their fear, their willingness to face enemy fire. We imagine it and recreate it in books and movies. I’ve certainly imagined battle for my Three Soldiers series.

Today seemed a fitting day to talk about my favorite war movies.

I’ll start with a Regency era one, of course.

Waterloo (1971) starring Christopher Plummer as Wellington, and Rod Steiger as Napoleon. The battle scenes in this movie are magnificent. Once scene almost perfectly recreates the painting by Lady Butler of the charge of the Scots Greys. The aerial photography of the French cavalry attacking the Allied squares was incredible. I loved how the important and memorable incidents from the battle were depicted.

The Longest Day (1962) from a book by Cornelius Ryan, a book I actually read! This movie tells the story of D Day, not with, perhaps, the graphic horror of the battle as in Speilberg’s Saving Private Ryan (which I have not seen), but a great movie for its scope of the battle and its ensemble cast including Henry Fonda, John Wayne (of course), a young not-yet-famous Sean Connery, Richard Burton, Eddy Albert, Paul Anka…and more. Like in Waterloo, important parts of the battle are shown and woven together to show how the victory was accomplished.

Zulu (1964), my favorite war movie of all time!  Zulu is the true story of an attack in 1879 by 4000 Zulu forces on a small hospital and supply depot guarded by 139 Welsh infantrymen, many who were hospitalized. Narrated by Richard Burton and starring Stanley Baker, Nigel Green, and a very young Michael Caine, this movie shows true valor and celebrates, in the end, the respect all soldiers are due.

Zulu and The Longest Day are available on Netflix and other dvd vendors. Waterloo might be harder to find but is worth the search.

Notice all these movies were made decades ago. The distance in time helps me favor them. I have a more difficult time watching more recent depictions of war, especially if the movies involve Vietnam or Iraq and Afghanistan. Too close for comfort…

Here’s a Memorial Day video that literally made me cry. It was created by a 15 year old girl and is going viral on the internet.

What are your favorite war movies? Have you seen any of my three? What do you think of them? What did you think of the video?

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Spiders and other domestic matters

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Here’s a recent portrait of me.

No, really, this is the way I feel after massive cleaning, sorting, throwing out of items in preparation for some fairly substantial work to be done on my house.

This is a portrait of Mrs. Jane Ebrell when she was 87 by provincial artist John Walters of Denbigh, one of the servants at Erddig, a national trust property dating from the 18th century whose owners liked to commission servants’ portraits (and later photographs), embellished with poems. Mrs. Ebrell, a former housemaid, was hired as a Spider Catcher, possibly as a way for the family to support her in her later years. (I have been dealing with monumental spider webs.)

My thanks to the Two Nerdy History Girls who found the text of the poem:

To dignifie our Servants’ Hall
Here comes the Mother, of us all:
For seventy years, or near have passed her,
since spider-brusher to the Master;
When busied then, from room to room,
She drove the dust, with burhs, and broom
Anyd by the virtues of her mop
To all uncleanness, put a stop:
But changing her housemaiden state,
She took our coachman, for a mate;
To whom she prov’d an useful gip,
And brought us forth a second whip:
Morever, this, oft, when she spoke,
Her tongue, was midwife, to a joke,
And making many an happy hit,
Stands here recorded for a wit:
O! may she, yet some years, survive,
And breed her Grandchildren to drive!

She certainly sounds better at cleaning than me. (And to whichever member of the Yorke family of Erddig wrote the poem, don’t give up your day job.) I’ve mentioned Erddig before as it is such a rich source of servant info, but I may not have told you what an excellent cake shop it has–other food is sold there, but I ate only cake. The walls of the cake shop are hung with photos of the house as it was before restoration by the National Trust. This is Philip Yorke, the last private owner of Erddig, in the one habitable room of the house before he deeded it to the National Trust (note: no electricity!). It was a real mess with subsiding floors (built over a coal mine, something I borrowed for The Rules of Gentility), buckets scattered throughout the house to catch leaks from the roof–just horrible. Happily major restoration, funded by the Coal Board and sale of some of the land, put it to rights and it’s now one of the most popular stately homes in England.

But back to my humble home–any tips for surviving renovation? If I were in the Regency and wealthy I’d just take off to one of my other houses, leaving my faithful butler in charge. Sadly that is not the case. The best tip I’ve had so far is to eat out as much as possible and label the boxes.

And a small reminder that (1) The Malorie Phoenix is now 99 cents for kindle and (2) I’d love some amazon reviews. If you’re a legit blogger/reviewer, please contact me.

 

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A Visit from Miranda Neville

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We’re delighted to welcome back to the Riskies today smart and funny Miranda Neville, talking about her latest book, Confessions of an Arranged Marriage. And yes, there’s a contest. Here’s her book blurb ….

They couldn’t be more different, but there’s one thing they agree on.

In London after a two-year exile, Lord Blakeney plans to cut a swathe through the bedchambers of the demimonde. Marriage is not on his agenda, especially to an annoying chit like Minerva Montrose, with her superior attitude and a tendency to get into trouble. And certainly the last man Minerva wants is Blake, a careless wastrel without a thought in his handsome head.

The heat and noise of her debutante ball give Minerva a migraine. Surely a moment’s rest could do no harm … until Blake mistakes her for another lady, leaving Minerva’s guests to catch them in a very compromising position. To her horror, the scandal will force them to do the unthinkable: marry. Their mutual loathing blazes into unexpected passion but Blake remains distant, desperate to hide a shameful secret. Minerva’s never been a woman to take things lying down, and she’ll let nothing stop her from winning his trust … and his heart.

Welcome back to the Riskies, Miranda! Did you always plan for Minerva and Blake to have their own book?

I think I decided to bring them together when I was doing copy edits for The Dangerous Viscount. Minerva was the cute little sister with a gift for snark and a desire to be a diplomatic or political hostess. Blake was the guy who didn’t get the girl. I realized I wanted to write Minerva’s book and I had this perfectly good (and hot) heir to a dukedom lying around the place. They loathed each other and were patently ill-suited, in other words a perfect match.

In modern terms Minerva is the over-achieving star of the debate team with 1600 on her SATs and a life plan. Blake is the captain of the football team who doesn’t even need a sports scholarship because Daddy is loaded. I had to figure out why they were, in fact, right for each other and hope I succeeded.

Are either of them based on a real historical character?

Blake’s family is loosely based on the Dukes of Portland, one of the great eighteenth century Whig dynasties. I wanted to show how dukes actually got to be rich and powerful and how they stayed that way.  Minerva is a bossy, over-ambitious girl who thinks she’s always right. No one like that has ever existed in the history of the world.

What research did you turn up during this book? (Yes, now is your chance to go to town on rotten boroughs.)

I’m sure you’ll be fascinated to know that the rotten borough in the book was inspired by Old Sarum. This Anglo-Saxon fort was pretty much abandoned when the cathedral was rebuilt in nearby Salisbury. Until 1832, though inhabited mostly by sheep, it sent two members to Parliament. I’m not sure I’ll ever write another romance with a political background. The day-to-day conduct of political life is so complicated and I offer only a totally watered-down, over-simplified version of the era’s political culture.

I had fun when I sent Blake and Minerva to Paris on their honeymoon. Guidebooks of the period are full of great detail about travel, inns, and restaurants. I was particularly thrilled to learn that it was perfectly normal in Paris for ladies to eat out. I discovered a café converted from an old theater and sent my couple on a date there. The English (and Americans, too) have a long tradition of going to Paris to misbehave.

What do you like about the 1820s?

The decade feels modern. The middle class is growing in size and influence. There’s a sense that progress will not be held back, despite some King Canute rearguard action by conservatives like George IV and the Duke of Wellington. Even they had to agree to Catholic Emancipation by the end of the decade, and Parliamentary reform was inevitable, though the reformers were still in the political wilderness. That said, I didn’t choose to set Confessions in 1822. Since it’s the fourth in a series it just turned out that way. The issues – and the way the politics worked – would have been different if the setting was twenty years earlier.

What’s your favorite scene?
My favorite scene is probably when Blake finally embraces his political heritage and Minerva finds it incredibly hot. However, it’s near the end of the book and a bit spoilerish. Since this is the Risky Regencies, I’ll chose the passage where Minerva decides to spy on some Bonapartists (or so she thinks) in a Paris mansion.

….She dodged him, closed the door into the corridor, and fixed her ear to the door into the next room. Holding Blake off with the flat of her hand and a ferocious glare, she heard two voices this time, one of them male, still speaking in German. Agog with anticipation she tried to make sense of the words coming through the solid panels.
“You are a very bad dog.” At least, that’s what it sounded like.
Then a noise like a woman imitating a bark, and a shuffling sound. Minerva shook her head in bafflement and put her finger in her ear, to make sure it wasn’t blocked with wax.
“Lick my boots!”
What?
“What?” Blake had reached her side and was crowding her in the door embrasure.
“Ssh!” She got down on her knees and peered through the keyhole. It was a large one and she could see quite a lot of the adjoining bedroom. In her view was the lower half of a gentleman’s body, from waist to boots, and she had no difficulty recognizing the somewhat stout figure of the Duke of Mouchy-Ferrand, even without a sight of his florid complexion and heavily pomaded curls. The shuffling noise resolved itself into Princess Walstein, on hands and knees and wearing only her undergarments, crawling into view and preceding to obey her master’s command. She really did lick his boots.
Minerva slumped back onto her heels. She considered herself hard to astonish, but this did it. When Blake pushed her aside she put up no resistance. He took her place at the keyhole, let out a ghost of a whistle, and began to shake with silent laughter.

Brilliant! What’s next for you?

I’m starting a brand new series set in 1800, technically pre-Regency but in the era of high-waisted gowns so I guess it counts. Since I don’t seem to be able to write about men with manly occupations like spy, pirate, or soldier, the heroes (and one heroine) are art collectors. The first is called THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING WICKED and will be released November 27, 2012.

I’ve discovered some readers really don’t like politics in their romance. In fact I think a used carriage salesman would be more popular. However, characters need to have something to do when they’re not being–ahem–romantic. What are the best and worst occupations for a Regency hero and/or heroine?

Your comment or question for Miranda will enter you into a contest to win a copy of Confessions, your choice of print or ebook. 18 and over, void where prohibited, etc. etc.  Winner will be announced Monday and please leave a safe version of your email so we can contact you.
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