The winner of a copy of The English Lily is….niteofblu at gmail dot com!! Congrats! Send your contact info to Kathe AT klwheeler.com…
The winner of a copy of The English Lily is….niteofblu at gmail dot com!! Congrats! Send your contact info to Kathe AT klwheeler.com…
Am recovering from a bit of under-the-weatherness today, so let’s look at some pretty pictures!!! I read that May 7, 1664 was the day Louis XIV “officially” opened Versailles as the center of his court. I had a wonderful time on my visit to this magical place a few years ago, wandering the (crowded) halls and gardens, imagining myself in a pink brocade gown and towering hairdo, carrying my little dog and whispering gossip behind my fan with my friends (and holding up a perfume pomade to get away from the smell!!). Here are a few of my favorite places there:
You can read more about the history of Versailles here at their official site….
Where would you like to visit again?? Do you have any good memories of Versailles, or places there you love?
Last week I finally got the cover for my September Harlequin Historicals release, The Runaway Countess!! It’s such a suspenseful moment just before opening those new cover files. Will it be hideous? Beautiful? Make my heroine look weirdly like Miley Cyrus or something? But I didn’t need to worry at all about this one, I love it wholeheartedly.
Wed to wickedness
In Society’s eyes, Hayden Fitzwalter, Earl of Ramsay and Jane Bancroft have the perfect marriage. But what can’t be seen are the secrets hidden behind closed doors. Believing Hayden will never renounce his dissolute ways, Jane flees to her family’s dilapidated estate in the country.
Years later, Hayden now longs to win back the only woman who has ever touched his heart. But first he has to convince her that this rogue is ready to be tamed….
BANCROFTS OF BARTON PARK
Two sisters, two scandals, two sizzling love affairs
It’s available for pre-order now…
This book was my first attempt at a “marriage in trouble” story, which was a fun challenge! How to take a couple already married, but torn apart by disappointed expectations and a lost child. It made writing their HEA twice as sweet, I think. (Book two will be the story of Jane’s free-spirited sister Emma…)
Do you like “marriage in trouble” plots?? What do you look for in Regency covers?
And I will be drawing a winner for Kae Elle Wheeler’s The English Lily later tonight! You still have time to comment on last Tuesday’s post….
Somehow I forgot it’s Tuesday!! How could i do that? (might have something to do with the story that is due Friday…) So I am re-posting an article I did for my own blog last weekend. I sometimes do a Heroine of the Weekend post there on an historical woman I find interesting, and this week’s was Juliette Recamier, a woman whose image will be very familiar to anyone who enjoys the Regency. She died on May 11, 1849….
She was born Jeanette-Francoise Julie Adelaide Bernard to royal notary Jean Bernard and his beautiful wife Marie Julie in Lyon in 1777, where she was educated at the Convent de la Deserte before the family moved to Paris. The family’s fortunes went down during the Revolution, and she was married at the age of 15 to wealthy banker and family friend Jacques-Rose Recamier (the rumor had it that he had an affair with her mother and Juliette was his natural daughter, but this was never proven…). Recamier himself said “I am not in love with her, but I feel for her a genuine and tender attachment which convinces me that this interesting creature will be a partner who will ensure the happiness of my whole life and, judging by my own desire to ensure her happiness, of which I can see she is absolutely convinced, I have no doubt that the benefit will be reciprocal …. She possesses germs of virtue and principle such as are seldom seen so highly developed at so early an age ; she is tender-hearted, affectionate, charitable and kind, beloved in her home-circle and by all who know her”
The marriage was never consumated, but Juliette kept herself busy with a popular salon that was crowded with artistic and political stars of the day. Her health was never very good, so she often reclined on the low sofa now called a “recamier” in her honor, but that didn’t stop the conversation. She had a long romance with Francois-Rene Chateaubriand, the writer, politician, and historian often considered to be the founder of French literary Romanticism. She had other admirers, including the duc de Montmorency, Lucien Bonaparte, Prince Augustus of Prussia, and the baron de Barante.
But one person who didn’t admire her was Napoleon, especially considering her friendship with Germaine de Stael and her refusal to be a lady-in-waiting to Empress Josephine. She was exiled from Paris, traveling to rome and Naples, and to stay with Madame de Stael in Switzerland (where they came up with a scheme for her to divorce in order to marry Prince Augustus, but it never worked out). Sadly, she lost much of her fortune late in life, but still carried on her famous salon from her apartment at the convent of L’Abbaye-aux-Bois, until she died of cholera in 1849 and was buried in Montmarte.
Her style is still influential, especially to those of us who love the Regency period! Everyone knows her image, even those who don’t know who she was…
A few sources for her eventful life:
Eduoard Herriot, Madame Recamier (1906)
H. Noel Williams, Madame Recamier and her Friends (1901)
Stephane Paccoud, Juliette Recamier: Muse et mecene (2009)
(Amanda will be back with her regularly scheduled Tuesday post next week! In the meantime, her friend Kae Elle Wheeler has agreed to visit the Riskies again with a look at her new release, The English Lily! Comment for a chance to win a copy…)
Lady Kendra has led a long fruitful life. But as a young woman, and in a major turning point of her life, her time with Charles Thomas was cut remarkably short. To ease her mind, she sends him a heart-filled note.
Dear Mr. Thomas,
I realize it is most inappropriate for me to send you this letter, but rest assured I have my husband’s utmost approval. It has been many years since I last saw you, and the memory still haunts my dreams I fear. I thought if I could enlighten you to my situation we might each finally move forward, where ever that might be for you now.
Since that most fateful day aboard the Cecilé, I married Joseph. True, he was a most successful magician, but I am pleased to say he has proved an even more devoted husband and father. We have four beautiful children. Our eldest and heir to Yarmouth named Charles for you, my dear friend. You would be most proud of Charles, for he is a brilliant scholar and benefactor of The School for the Poor and Unfortunate. The others fell closely in his footsteps in their efforts to realize your dreams. Aaron, our most athletic is an avid hunter and horseman. Our girls, twins, mind, Julia and Jane, followed in their father’s way with his magic. Oh, not that Joseph would allow them to tread the boards! But he taught them all of his silly parlour tricks on which the two took to perfecting and creating with havoc of their own.
For many years, I kept in very close contact with your mother, to her very end. I am proud she called me Friend. Finally, you will be most happy to know my husband reads a beautiful poem or story to me each and every night when we retire, and on occasion, I find I quite enjoy reading one to him as well.
I hope this note will offer you the peace that is descending on me as I pen it.
Yours forever, most devotedly so,
Kendra Frazier, Lady Yarmouth
From the back cover: Lady Kendra Frazier is devastated. The love of her life just married another, and now all she desires is to be as far away as possible. Viscount Lawrie, Joseph Pinetti Gray, is facing financial ruin and needs a wealthy heiress. Luckily for him, Kendra’s impetuous nature has handed him the fortuity he requires to save his family’s downfall. But Joseph’s carefully cultivated plans come to a grinding halt when he finds himself falling in love for what should have only been a marriage of convenience. And how can an old cursed doll help?
The Oklahoma Romance Writers of America, through The Wild Rose Press, have a series of books. Each Tales of the Scrimshaw Doll book must meet a certain criteria. This criteria includes a tie to Oklahoma in some fashion, portraying the curse of the doll accurately, must be romance and the hero/heroine cannot have been married to one another previously.
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Kae Elle Wheeler has a BA degree from the University of Central Oklahoma in Management Information Systems that includes over forty credit hours of vocal music. As a computer programmer the past fifteen years, she utilizes karaoke for her vocal music talents. Other passions include fantasy football, NBA and musical theatre season tickets, and jazzercise. Because to quote Nora Roberts to a one time question, if she worked out? Her reply, “You have to get off your ass.”
Kae began has been a member of the Oklahoma Chapter of Romance Writer’s of America and the RWA since March of 2007. She grew up in the Dallas area and definitely considers herself a city girl. She does not limit her travels to Writer Conferences in San Francisco, Washington DC, Seattle, Dallas, New Jersey, New York City and Atlanta because Jazzercise has fun conferences too (Denver, Palm Springs and Orlando). You can’t keep her at home!
She is a member of several RWA Chapters, including DARA, The Beau Monde and Passionate Ink. She has held several positions in the OKRWA Chapter, currently serving as Programs Director. As an avid reader of romance and patron of theatre, her main sources of inspiration come from mostly an over-active imagination. She currently resides in Edmond, Oklahoma with her musically talented husband, Al, and their bossy cat, Carly.